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It has been little more than a century since Freud's “talking cure” ushered in psychotherapy as the treatment of choice for a wide range of psychological disorders. The need for rigorous, controlled empirical research assessing the effectiveness of various psychotherapeutic interventions has never been greater. Increasing financial constraints from managed care, coupled with an explosion of pharmacological alternatives to established psychotherapeutic treatments have combined to create a sense of urgency—even alarm—among practitioners. Many mental health professionals fear that psychotherapy's days are numbered, and that the field will never regain its former stature and status.
It is against this backdrop that Weissmark and Giacomo's Doing Psychotherapy Effectively takes on even greater importance than it otherwise might. The crux of this book is the authors' contention that although there are many noteworthy programs of psychotherapy research being conducted today, these research programs might not be capable of delineating empirically the core features of psychotherapeutic efficacy—the common ingredients that made different forms of psychotherapy work.