Counseling and Psychotherapy Essentials: Integrating Theories, Skills,
and Practices
by Glen E. Good and Bernard D. Beitman, New York, W.W. Norton, 2006,
384 pgs., $49.95 (hardcover)
Although the aims of effective and compassionate patient care are consistently
held in common, the range of approaches, schools, and theories of
psychotherapeutic practice can be daunting to even the most seasoned
of practitioners. The sheer variety of methodological approaches
and the lexical commitments that they presuppose can often obscure
as much as inform our outcomes. With the needs of actual clinical
practice consistently in mind, the authors of this textbook present
a pragmatic, synthetic approach to psychotherapy that does not dilute
the challenges we face both in the variety of our patients' particular
life narratives and the conceptual maps which can be of use in their
care. To this daunting task, the authors bring distinctive and needed
complementary perspectives and experiences: Glenn E. Good is a professor
of education who has written a handbook of psychotherapy and counseling,
and Bernard D. Beitman is a professor of psychiatry who has written
on bridging the pharmacology/psychotherapy divide. These collaborative
voices enhance and are consonant with the larger integrative psychotherapeutic
aims of the textbook.
The book’s structure is conducive to its larger aims of integration by
beginning with theoretical foundations and then sharpening its focus
to practical clinical issues. Section I, "Foundations of Counseling
and Psychotherapy," provides an abstract—yet accessible—framework
to the reader by summarizing a number of the main approaches in the
field: psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, multicultural,
and systemic. Section II, "Components of Effective Counseling
and Psychotherapy," provides the reader with insights about
the basic features of successful and competent office practice, including
guidance on therapeutic communication, working alliances, identifying
patterns and their treatment, strategies for facilitating change,
resolving resistance, negotiating transference and countertransference,
and termination. Finally, Section III, "Higher Incidence Concerns
and Effective Treatments," addresses specific high-yield issues
for clinicians, such as depression, suicide, anxiety, substance abuse,
and couples, family and marital therapy.
The authors have distilled a tremendous amount of material and clinical
literature germane to psychotherapy and counseling. Throughout they write
in the tradition of the biopsychosocial model that is the foundation
for American psychiatric practice, and while avoiding jargon, they
also manage to avoid facile reductionism. Readers interested in the
historical development of the approaches to the mind described here
can supplement their readings by turning to such classics as Leston
Havens’s Approaches to the Mind [1].
The last chapter, "Medications, Therapy, and the Neural Circuitry
of the Brain," tackles the rapidly emerging field of psychosocial
neurobiology. Readers interested in supplementing the discussion offered
in this chapter may well want to turn to such fundamental works as Arnold
Modell’s Imagination and the Meaningful Brain [2].
-
Havens LL: Approaches to the Mind: Movement
of the Psychiatric Schools from Sects Toward Science. Cambridge,
Mass, Harvard University Press, 1987.
-
Modell, Arnold H: Imagination and the Meaningful
Brain. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 2003.
