Crucial issues in the applied analysis of verbal behavior: reflections on crucial conversations: tools for talking when the stakes are high.

A popular-press self-help manual is reviewed with an eye toward two issues. First, the popularity of such books documents the existence of considerable demand for technologies that address the everyday problems (in the present case, troublesome conversations) of nondisordered individuals. Second, many ideas invoked in popular-press books may be interpretable within an analysis of verbal behavior, although much more than casual translation is required to develop technologies that outperform self-help manuals. I discuss several challenges relevant to research, theory refinement, technology development, and dissemination, and conclude that behavioral alternatives to existing popular-press resources may not emerge anytime soon.