Reviews the book,
Counseling methods for personnel workers by Annette Garrett (see record
1946-00536-000). The primary purpose of this book is a statement of basic counseling principles which will be of practical value to industrial counselors. With regard to the directive versus non-directive controversy in counseling, this book takes a middle of the road position. The author stresses the dangers and inadvisability of giving advice, but recommends giving information and warns against too much listening and too little action. Directive counselors are apt to consider the book too non-directive, and non-directive counselors will condemn it for being too directive. Counselors belonging to neither of the extreme schools will praise the book for having a refreshing eclectic viewpoint. The book is filled with numerous cases taken from industrial records. These are well selected to emphasize and clarify the author's arguments, and will do much to make the book usable to industrial counselors. This book will be valuable to all industrial and union personnel who are directly or indirectly concerned with counseling. It will also be valuable to experienced case workers who lack understanding of industrial counseling and to new workers in the case field. Personnel courses offered to persons having little or no formal training in psychology can well use the book for supplementary reading if it is desired that such students gain a maximum amount of general information about industrial counseling with a minimum expenditure of time and effort. The book was not intended for a psychology text or reference, and would have little value for such use; although many industrial and academic psychologists could profit from the manner in which the book treats a professional field in such way as to be fascinating, understandable and valuable to people in business and industry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)