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].
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Havens LL: Approaches to the Mind: Movement
of the Psychiatric Schools from Sects Toward Science. Cambridge,
Mass, Harvard University Press, 1987.
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Modell, Arnold H: Imagination and the Meaningful
Brain. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 2003.