Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on how someone in need can best be helped, the author identifies the skills and honesty of the person who wants to help as key to how effective this can be. Looking in detail at the nature of boundaries, willingness to speak from a place of authenticity and to be honestly present to the experience of the individual person, and the sensitive and economical use of language, the author shows how people in a state of deep personal crisis can be richly helped. Taking the view that no set response is always right or always wrong, he argues strongly for the importance of going with what is spontaneous and real in the moment, and responding thoughtfully and with integrity to the experience of the person in need.
The book is an inspiration to develop deep awareness about the practice of encounter. Focusing on experiences of crisis and anxiety, the author provides many in-depth case examples, and sample scripts with actual questions and answers included. This short and deceptively simple book will raise awareness of, and broaden the range of, possible interventions for the open-minded reader.
Trade ReviewThis book is without comparison, the best I have ever read on dialogue therapy. Bent Falk is able to describe difficult problems and dilemmas, with an unrivalled simplicity and accessibility. -- Ralph Kauffmann, M.D., Gentofte, Denmark
The art of establishing contact through awareness and presence is described so that everyone will understand it. Included are dialogues that provide examples of questions and answers. -- Katja Larsen, selective reader for the Danish libraries
This book provides several concrete tools for the art of dialogue, whether it be in a professional context or in private. This is the best starting point for a dialogue about what the individuals seeking help are able to change in their lives, what the cost of this change would be, and how they can be better equipped to cope with that which cannot be changed. -- Lotta Haettner Sandberg, M.Div. Counselor, teacher and trainer at the Pastoral Seminary of the Church of Sweden, Lund
Table of ContentsPreface. I. Introduction. 1. Technique or Attitude. 2. Crisis. 3. Anxiety and Primary Feelings. II. Practical Guidelines. 1. It is Less Complicated Than You Think. 2. All Essential Resources for Overcoming a Difficulty are in the Person Having the Difficulty, or in the Field of Interaction Between the People in Dialogue. 3. Good Help is Help Towards Self-Help. All Other Help is Intrusion. 4. When, As the Helper, You Don't Know What to Say or Do, That is What You Should Say or Do. 5. Don't Let Having a Problem Turn Into a Problem in Itself. 6. Boundaries Make Contact. 7. You Cannot Change What You Do Not Accept. 8. The Consolation is That There is No Consolation. 9. The Person in Distress Does Not Need Consolation, but Love. 10. Life is Neither Fair Nor Unfair. 11. Guilt and Power are Two Sides of the Same Coin. 12. Forgiveness Does Not Remove Guilt. It Re-establishes the Relationship in Spite of the Guilt. 13.
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but: The Small Words with the Biggest Effects. 14. Helping Through Dialogue: In Reality it is Possible and Not Too Difficult. III. Examples. 1. The Meaning. 2. Expanding on the Concept of Meaning. 3. Possible Answers When Your Old Ones Don't Lead to the Kind of Contact You Want. 4. Commentary to the 'New' Answers. Bibliography.
