This is the fully updated second edition teaches the skills therapists need to understand and empathize with clients, develop strong therapeutic alliances, make accurate contextualized assessments, and facilitate positive change. Empathy is fundamental to therapeutic change. This engaging and accessible text teaches students the clinical skills they will need as  therapists to communicate empathy and help clients change. Slattery and Park begin by outlining a framework for understanding how clients think-what meaning they give to difficult situations-and how those meaning systems are connected to cultural and other contextual factors. Chapters that follow discuss how their empathic framework can be factored into assessment, intervention, ending treatment, and even case reporting and ethical concerns. Throughout they emphasize that effective therapists possess not only strong observational, listening, and critical thinking skills, but that they also put their clients amp rsquo