Issue
29(1)
Becoming
An Ethical Helping Professional: Cultural and philosophical foundations
(2007) Rita Sommers-Flanagan,
John Sommers-Flanagan. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
432 pp., $70.00, (paperback), ISBN 978-0-471-73810-7
Review by: Ryan
Scheckel
School of Art
Texas Tech University
While Drs. Rita and John Sommers-Flanagan
(and their contributors) may “use the words counselor, therapist,
mental health professional, and helper interchangeably, believing
that the shared ethical domain is greater than the sum of the
distinctions” (p. xxiii), the legal domain of the mental health
professional, the training domain of counseling, and the content
domain of therapy are typically not shared by the helper more
often known as academic advisor. That said, it is easy to agree
with the authors’ conclusion that “being completely unfazed by
the topics covered in this book would be a symptom of either extreme
naïveté or professional narcissism” (p. 332). This reviewer would
add “ignorance” to that list of possibilities. From the perspective
of an academic advisor, this mental health textbook must be read
with one’s professional translator dialed up the entire time.
When translated, however, there is a veritable smorgasbord of
“food for thought” for the academic advisor.
For those interested in ethics in
academic advising, the text begins with a foundational first course
in theory and moral philosophy that should whet anyone’s appetite
for further discussion among advising colleagues. Topics presented
for further consideration also include professional organizations
and identity, ethics codes and policies, and motivation and values.
The
second course is a meaty discussion of ethical challenges facing
the helping professions. These include familiar obstacles that
the academic advisor must also negotiate on daily basis. From
confidentiality and boundaries, to assessment and competence,
the Drs. Sommers-Flanagan look at the work of helping itself and
leave no stone unturned. This includes the seemingly mundane concerns
of officing, technology, and record keeping, as well as the more
apparent challenges brought to the helping relationship by both
the client and the helper. Quotations from the codes of ethics
of the APA ,
ACA, NASW, AMHCA, and ASCA
are cited alongside relevant
case studies. It is in some of these case studies and topics that
the differences between the mental health domain and the academic
advising domain may begin to seem most pronounced, but the work
of translating to equivalent academic advising scenarios is well
worth the effort.
Finally, the text concludes by detailing
some of the specializations within the helping professions. Here
the academic advisor finds the most palatable course. It includes
the tenth chapter entitled “Counseling in the Schools”, the eleventh
chapter that includes career counseling, the twelfth chapter that
addresses working in groups and with families, and the thirteenth
chapter that addresses supervision of helping professionals. This
third portion of the textbook requires the least amount of translation
and has led this reviewer into many interesting conversations
on his campus. Whether you be a faculty advisor, a career counselor,
a departmental staff advisor, or an advising administrator, read
this section with due diligence.
If the effort of constantly translating
from the metal health domain to the academic advising realm wears
the reader weary, peppered throughout are application activities,
“pauses for reflection”, “digressions for deliberation”, and thought-provoking
quotations that provide opportunities to apply the concepts presented
in the textbook to the work of helping students through academic
advising. The student counseling professional on campus would
be well advised to read this text, but so would the academic advising
professional. If nothing else, all of the mental health profession
references should lead the academic advisor to consider the academic
advising professional’s translated equivalent and explore those
publications.
