Coaching and Mentoring: A Critical Text is a unique contribution to the field. It traces coaching influences back to pre-modern times showing connections with Nsoul healersO of the past, taking a journey through modernity to post-modernity and making links that helps us better understand coaching today. Positioning coaching as working between the wounded-self (of therapeutic culture) and celebrated-self (of the human potential movement), it reveals four discourses that underpin contemporary coaching practice: 1. The Soul Guide Coach: coaching the inner-self, focusing on values, authenticity and identity. 2. The Psy Coach: coaching the outer-self, using psychological techniques to focus on personal performance and how we relate to others. 3. The Managerial Coach: coaching the role-self, focusing on work, task, output and productivity. 4. The Network Coach: coaching the networked-self, focusing on the wider networks in which we live and work. This vital new book brings a fresh and critical perspective on coaching and mentoring, challenging its taken-for-granted assumptions and narratives. It is written by a practitioner-scholar, and develops an exciting vision for coaching today. Key features: O Accounts for the diverse influences on contemporary coaching practice O Reveals how coaching is the new post-modern confessional O Develops a meta-theory of coaching that acts as a baseline for future developments O Offers frames of thinking to guide coaching and mentoring practitioners and educators.