This accessible and scholarly text examines the five key theoretical orientations in contemporary psychotherapy: psychodynamic, experiential, cognitive–behavioral, family systems, and integrative. Distinguished contributors lay out the major concepts that define these enduring theories of psychotherapy, discuss the ideas of the theorists who have expanded them, and describe the evolution of these central concepts over time.
Wachtel and Messer have made distinguished contributions to the understanding of psychotherapy. In this work, they offer very current, comprehensive coverage of theories of psychotherapy. Five different chapters represent the predominant conceptual thrusts of the field. Distinguished contributors were chosen for those key theoretical orientations—psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, family systems, and integrative. Most of the authors contributed to the large reference volume History of Psychotherapy: A Century of Change, edited by D. K. Freedheim. The present work includes revised and expanded versions of those chapters, encompassing the latest developments in the field. The editors' own introductory chapter is entirely new and concisely presents the latest developments and controversies in the areas of brief therapy, modernist and postmodernist outlooks on therapy. Psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, controversy over empirically validated treatments, and the influence of managed care on psychotherapy. They have provided a brief , affordable, up-to-date, easily read, and understandable presentation of the present state of theories of psychotherapy
—CHOICE, May 1998, Vol 35, No 9
…an excellent book.
Contemporary Psychology®, 1998, Vol 43, No 9
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