Press Reviews

• The Drug & Alcohol Professional

  The author presents us with a very readable person-centred strategy for working with problem drinkers as an alternative to the normally 'directive' therapies that are practiced. It is debatable whether the theoretical purists would agree with this classification.

• Brian Thorne, Emeritus Professor of Counselling, University of East Anglia, UK

  I commend this book to those person-centred practitioners who have not ventured into this area of counselling before because they have considered it too "specialist". They will, I believe, be encouraged and emboldened. I commend it, too, to practitioners from other traditions who continue to entertain the false notion that person-centred counselling is not suitable for really serious problems. They may glimpse in its pages the self-evident but often neglected truth that it is persons who have problems and persons who demand our respect and professional commitment.

• Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal

  This is a highly readable book, recommended for any counsellor whose client may be drinking inappropriately or even a little too much. It includes numerous examples of illustrative dialogue between client and counsellor and a section about the family. It should become a core text for trainee alcohol counsellors. Furthermore, it provides an excellent summary of the application of the person-centred approach to managers of alcohol services, often not trained counsellors themselves, and sometimes suspicious of this way of working.

• Diane Stead, Person-centred counsellor

  I recently enjoyed reading 'Counselling the Person Beyond The Alcohol Problem' which I found informative and useful. I liked in particular the discussion/rationale of offering specialist knowledge in context as opposed to a sense of being an expert on your client. Like Richard, I struggle as best I can to offer the core conditions through my relationship with each client. What a relief I felt on reading his conviction that not to share helpful insight is to leave a client vulnerable - 'a form of negligence'. And that such insight, when proffered, arising from within a particular relationship is not being directive but, rather, congruent reading, this book will help me to be a more effective counsellor with 'this' client group, written as it is from a place of commitment to providing a caring and supportive therapeutic environment for clients.Thanks for writing a much-needed book!