Practicing Cognitive Therapy

A Guide to Interventions

Edited by Robert L. Leahy

Hardback - £123.00

Publication date:

01 August 1997

Length of book:

504 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9781568218243

Since its development thirty-five years ago, the practice of cognitive therapy has been extended well beyond the treatment of depression. It is now effectively used with substance abuse, marital conflict, sexual dysfunction, panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, paranoid delusional disorders, and a variety of other affective, anxiety, and personality disorders. Each chapter in this volume presents state-of-the-art treatment by one of the field's leading practitioners, demonstrating interventions in rich clinical detail for the therapist interested in why the method works and how to apply it. We also see how other theoretical orientations are integrated into the cognitive framework.

"One cannot help but be impressed with the ability of these clinicians to adapt the cognitive therapy model to the needs of individual patients," comments the founder of the model, Aaron Beck, who called Robert Leahy's earlier book, Cognitive Therapy: Basic Principles and Applications, "a treasure trove for clinicians, scholars, and researchers."
Robert Leahy should be commended for showing us the breadth and maturity of cognitive therapy. While it was once only a treatment intended for depressive disorders, we now see its effective application in a wide variety of psychiatric illnesses. Practitioners of all therapeutic biases will find these treatment-oriented essays provocative and enlightening. They will be surprised, as I was, that many of the techniques of cognitive therapy can be comfortably integrated into psychodynamic treatments.