ABSTRACT
Mines serve an important purpose. Valuable minerals, raw materials, gems, and rare metals are extracted from them. In the past, when the mines were spent of their value, companies would often abandon them, leaving an open shaft. Similarly, the skills found in this section leave deep shafts that, once entered, are difficult to back away from. For example, even if advice a therapist freely doles out to his clients sometimes “works” (even a blind pig gets an occasional acorn), the therapist may be doing a tremendous disservice to both the client and the profession of therapy by giving advice. If the client now assumes that therapists exist to tell him how to live his life, what is best for him, and what decisions he should make, the client may well assume a dependency role, wrongly concluding that therapists will relieve him of having to make his own decisions in life. This is not the true role of the therapist, of course. School does not provide therapists with answers to the problems their clients will face. Both you and your clients need to recognize that fact. Therapists are advised to avoid as much as possible the “skills” located in this chapter.
