Outstanding Faculty:
01 | An Author Writes Volumes for Professionals and Lay Readers
Jeffrey Kottler, chair of the Counseling Department, has written more than 60 books covering an amazing range of subjects. Some are for therapists: The Imperfect Therapist: Learning from Failure in Therapeutic Practice, The Mummy at the Dining Room Table: Eminent Therapists Reveal Their Most Unusual Cases and What They Teach Us About Human Behavior. Some are for educators: What’s Really Said in the Teacher’s Lounge. Some are for the general public: The Language of Tears, The Last Victim: Inside the Mind of Serial Killers.
All of his books “originate from some intensely personal issue that confounds or interests me,” Kottler says. “I wrote a book about the phenomenon of crying because I had stopped crying for many years until a near-death experience. I wrote a book about conflict resolution because I was working in another university with a very dysfunctional faculty. I wrote a book about how therapists are changed by their clients because I am so profoundly affected and influenced by my students and clients.”
Kottler has taught for more than 30 years throughout the world. A Fulbright lecturer
in Peru and other countries, he has also spent 10 years on an Indian reservation, teaching counseling to minority students.
But Fullerton is his home base. “CSUF feels like a small town to me,” he says. “Even amidst an urban setting, everyone is so friendly and helpful. In the Counseling Department we have among the most culturally diverse faculty and students in the world, yet there is an atmosphere of caring and respect for one another’s differences.”
