I Never Knew I Had a Choice: Explorations in Personal Growth

Honest and inspiring, I NEVER KNEW I HAD A CHOICE: EXPLORATIONS IN PERSONAL GROWTH, 11th Edition, will motivate you to focus on your personal growth and create real change. The text covers a broad range of key topics, including personal style of learning, the effects of childhood and adolescence experiences on current behavior and choices, meeting the challenges of adulthood and autonomy, and many other issues related to personal growth and development. The warm yet research-based discussion of significant dimensions of life will help you examine the choices you've made, expand your awareness of the choices available to you, and choose where to go from here. As you work through the text's self-inventories, exercises, and activities -- and read the first-person accounts of the difficult choices real people have made -- you'll gain invaluable insight into your life, beliefs, and attitudes in a personally empowering way.

Gerald Corey, Ed.D., ABPP, is professor emeritus of human services and counseling at California State University at Fullerton. Presently, he is a distinguished visiting professor of counseling at the University of Holy Cross in New Orleans, where he teaches intensive courses in counseling theories, group counseling and ethics. He received his doctorate in counseling from the University of Southern California and was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from National Louis University. Dr. Gerald Corey is a diplomate in counseling psychology (American Board of Professional Psychology), a licensed psychologist and a National Certified Counselor. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 17, Counseling Psychology and Division 49, Group Psychotherapy), the American Counseling Association and the Association for Specialists in Group Work. Both Gerald and Marianne Corey have received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Mental Health Counselors Association as well as the Eminent Career Award from the Association for Specialists in Group Work. In addition, he received the Outstanding Professor of the Year Award from California State University at Fullerton and the Thomas Hohenshil National Publications Award from the American Counseling Association. He is the author or co-author of 15 textbooks in counseling currently in print, along with more than 60 journal articles and book chapters. Several of his books have been translated into other languages. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COUNSELING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY has been translated into Arabic, Indonesian, Portuguese, Turkish, Korean and Chinese. THEORY OF PRACTICE AND GROUP COUNSELING has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Russian. ISSUES AND ETHICS IN THE HELPING PROFESSIONS has been translated into Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

Marianne Schneider Corey, MA, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California and a National Certified Counselor. She received her master’s degree in marriage, family and child counseling from Chapman College. A fellow of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, she was the recipient of its Eminent Career Award in 2001. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Mental Health Counselors Association in 2011. Marianne Corey has been involved in leading groups for different populations, providing training and supervision workshops in group process, facilitating self-exploration groups for graduate students in counseling. Both Marianne and Gerald Corey have conducted training workshops, continuing education seminars and personal-growth groups in the United States, Germany, Korea, Ireland, Belgium, Mexico, Hong Kong and China. Marianne had co-authored four other books with Cengage including: ISSUES AND ETHICS IN THE HELPING PROFESSIONS (11th ed.; 2024, with Gerald Corey and Cindy Corey), BECOMING A HELPER (8th ed.; 2021, with Gerald Corey), I NEVER KNOW I HAD A CHOICE (11th ed.; 2018, with Gerald Corey and Michelle Muratori) and GROUP TECHNIQUES (4th ed.; 2015, with Gerald Corey, Patrick Callanan and Michael Russell). Marianne and Jerry have been married since 1964. They have two adult daughters, Heidi and Cindy, two granddaughters, Kyla and Keegan and one grandson, Corey. Marianne grew up in Germany and has kept in close contact with her family and friends there. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, reading, visiting with friends, bike riding and hiking.

Michelle Muratori is a senior counselor and researcher at the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she works with highly gifted middle school and high school students who participate in the Study of Exceptional Talent and their families. After earning her MA in counseling psychology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Michelle received her PhD in counselor education from the University of Iowa. Her graduate research on the academic, social, and emotional adjustment of young college entrants earned her recognition from the Iowa Talented and Gifted Association, the National Association for Gifted Children, and the Mensa Education and Research Foundation and Mensa International, Ltd. At the University of Iowa, Michelle also earned the Howard R. Jones Achievement Award, the Albert Hood Promising Scholar Award, and the First in the Nation in Education (FINE) Scholar Award. Since 2005, Michelle has been a faculty associate in the Johns Hopkins School of Education (in the Counseling and Human Development area) and teaches courses in theories of counseling, group counseling, couple and family therapy, and diversity and social justice in counseling. In 2014, she was honored with the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award. Michelle regularly presents at national conferences in counseling and gifted education and is a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA), the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), the Maryland Association for Counseling and Development (MACD), and the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC).