Client Who Changed Me

Although the impact that clients can have on therapists is well-known, most work on the subject consists of dire warnings: mental health professionals are taught early on to be on their guard for burnout, compassion fatigue, and countertransference. However, while these professional hazards are very real, the scholarly focus on the negative potential of the client-counselor relationship often implies that no good can come of allowing oneself to get too close to a client's issues. This sentiment obscures what every therapist knows to be true: that the client-counselor relationship can also effect powerful positive transformations in a therapist's own life. The Client Who Changed Me is Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson's testimony to the significant and often life-changing ways in which therapists have been changed by their patients. Kottler and Carlson draw not only upon their own extensive experience - between them, they have more than fifty years in the field - but also upon lengthy interviews with dozens of the country's foremost therapists and theorists. This novel work presents readers with a truly unique perspective on the business of therapy: not merely how it appears externally, but how practitioners experience it internally. Although these stories paint a complex and multi-layered portrait of the client-counselor relationship, they all demonstrate the profound and unexpected rewards that the profession has to offer.

"...I was struck by the honesty and sense of inadequacy of therapists when acknowledging that they were ultimately powerless to help the individuals. Many took the painful experience forward to inform their future work, refusing to remain complacent."Kottler and Carlson's book provides a powerful illustration of how ultimately such personal development leads to a better therapist."Although suitable for all therapists this is especially relevant for those exploring their transition into a deeper developmental stage both personally and professionally."- Angela Cooper, Psychotherapist and counsellor, therapy today September 2006

Jeffrey A. Kottler, Ph. D., is Chair of the Counseling Department at California State University, Fullerton and is one of the most prolific authors in the fields of psychology and education. Jon Carlson, Psy.D., Ed.D., is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Counseling at Governors State University, University Park, Illinois and a Psychologist with the Wellness Clinic in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.