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Here is a book I have been waiting for: I have read about different therapies before but have never been able, in my mind, to compare them in a way which allowed me to integrate them into a common whole of therapy. This book starts that process.
Chapter 1 is concerned with classifying the various therapeutic arenas and examines how one might make choices between them. The next ten chapters, the core and value of this book, present ten different therapies each written by a leading exponent in their field, covering Freudian, Kleinian and Jungian practice, then personal centred therapy, personal construct therapy, existential therapy, gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, rational emotive therapy and behaviour therapy. Each chapter is written in a common format: historical context and developments in Britain, then theoretical assumptions, and lastly its practice and a case example.
The theoretical assumptions section covers the epistemology of each theory from different viewpoints which include the image of the person, concepts of psychological health and disturbance, and finally acquisition of psychological disturbance and its perpetuation. Each chapter then continues with a section on practice which examines the goals of each particular therapy, the person of the therapist and so the therapeutic style; from this the major therapeutic techniques are discussed and the change process to which they lead. Each chapter then ends with a case example which ties together the approach and displays this in a concise way. In chapter 12 the book moves on to compare two major aspects of the therapists: how various dimensions of personality are explored and therapist activity. Examples of personality dimensions are unconscious/conscious, affective/cognitive and endogenistic/exogenistic. Chapter 13 contains a brief statement by each exponent on their fields limitations, and the last three chapters discuss and present ecological psychotherapy.
It would be possible to discuss this boo