Humane Helping

Eric Maisel, PhD, is a retired licensed psychotherapist, creativity coach, and internationally respected expert in the field of mental health reform. He is the author of more than fifty books including The Future of Mental Health, Rethinking Depression, Overcoming Your Difficult Family, and The Van Gogh Blues. He reaches a large audience with his personal list, Psychology Today blog, print column for Professional Artist magazine, and weekly appearance in the Fine Art America newsletter.

"Humane Helping is a revolutionary book that needs to be read by everyone who cares about healing, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, life coaches, and other health-care professionals. Eric Maisel offers a new paradigm for engagement that takes us beyond ‘talk therapy or medications’ as our primary options. He reminds us that we're not helping ‘sick patients,’ but complex human beings not so different from ourselves." Jed Diamond, PhD, author of The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression"Eric Maisel breaks through the jargon and clinical distance so common in the literature to produce a book full of practical insight and genuine humanity. A welcome contribution." Dale McGowan, PhD, author of Raising Freethinkers"From the prolific Eric Maisel comes another practical gem about dealing with contemporary problems of living. Humane Helping is for helping professionals of all training backgrounds and contains provocative food for thought and actionable tips for newbies and the most experienced. Early on in Humane Helping, Maisel writes: ‘It is much easier to spend a day acting like an expert than just being a person.’ His book deftly and accessibly deconstructs the expert role and, more important, shows the professional hundreds of ways to ‘be a person.’" Lois Holzman, PhD, developmental psychologist, director of East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy, author of Vygotsky at Work and Play"For me, Humane Helping marks a shift in how we define and categorise 'the helping professions' by obfuscating seperation and segregation between the various models and approaches, getting beneath the label of a job title or role, and focussing on what actually helps. In this way, it is a beacon of light for any practitioner who practices, or hopes to practice, more integratively, humanely and creatively." Diane Parker, Coaching Today

• Introduction 1. Helping is Hard 2. Helping is Easy 3. Embracing Not Knowing 4. On Not Diagnosing 5. Being With a Person 6. Being With a Real Person 7. Where Will You Focus? 8. Creating Game Plans and Inviting Homework 9. Experimenting with Formulation 10. Including Life Purpose and Meaning 11. Including Circumstances and Experiences 12. Eclecticism and Personality Trait Work 13. Understanding the Psychiatric Survivor Recovery and Peer Support Movements 14. Humanely Helping Children 15. Alternative Helping: Meaning Coaching 16. Alternative Helping Resources for Parents, Children and Families 17. Shifting Your Practices