Some years ago, I was expected to get several units of college credit to complete my doctoral program and counseling was part of the curriculum.  I was unfamiliar with the course textbook and relatively new to the world of counseling.  Little did I know how quickly I would come to rely on Jay Adams’ textbook Competent to Counsel.

Jay Adam’s method of nouthetic counseling is thoroughly biblical.  It is the antithesis of Sigmund Freud’s methods of blaming behavior on someone else.  Nouthetic counseling seeks to trace the origins of behavior back to sin: the sin nature or some act of sin that might have been perpetrated against individuals.  Jay Adams makes the point very well that these behaviors have a remedy and anyone who can be well versed in the teachings of Scripture can be competent to counsel.

I find the book extremely insightful.  Adams does not advocate the modern methods of counselors regurgitating platitudes and showing their listening skills by repeating back to counselees everything they have said.  This method may seem appealing at first, but in the long run, it offers few solutions to the real problem of sin and its affect on our lives.

Competent to Counsel became one of my favorite textbooks and I recommend it to you with confidence that it will challenge your view of the need for counsel as well as the correct methods of counseling.