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An updated revision of Jeffrey Kottler's classic book On Being a Therapist reveals the new realities and inner experiences of therapeutic practice today.

For more than thirty years, On Being a Therapist has inspired generations of mental health professionals (and their clients) to explore the most private, confusing, and sacred aspects of helping others. In this thoroughly revised and updated sixth edition, Jeffrey Kottler explores many of the challenges that therapists face in their practices today, including pressures from increased technology, economic realities, and advances in theory and technique.

It started with a college course assignment, then escalated into a dangerous obsession. Eighteen-year-old honor student Jason Moss wrote to men whose body counts had made criminal history: men named Dahmer, Manson, Ramirez, and Gacy. Posing as their ideal victim, Jason seduced them with his words. One by one they wrote him back, showering him with their madness and violent fantasies. Then the game spun out of control. John Wayne Gacy revealed all to Jason - and invited his pen pal to visit him in prison.... It was an offer Jason couldn't turn down. Even if it made him....

A wife pretends to hang herself in the basement so she can time how long it will be before her husband comes to rescue her...a woman whose dead aunt was made into a mummy so the family could better grieve her passing and on occasion dine with her at family gatherings...a man wants his nose cut off to escape an annoying smell that haunts him...a teenage boy would only come to therapy if he could bring his pet snake. These and other fascinating and revealing stories are told by some of the most famous therapists in the world.

Graduate school and professional training for therapists often focus on academic preparation, but there's a lot more that a therapist needs to know to be successful after graduation. With warmth, wisdom, and expertise, Jeffrey A. Kottler covers crucial but underaddressed challenges that therapists face in their professional lives at all levels of experience. As honest and inspiring as it is revealing, this book offers therapists and counselors at all levels of experience key ideas for thriving after formal education.