Customer Reviews

Essential Psychotherapies, Second Edition: Theory and Practice

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it's just my opinion, but of the three primary texts used to describe counseling and psychotherapeutic theories and practice, those being essential psychotherapies by gurman; current psychotherapies by corsini; and theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy by corey, essential psychotherapies is the weakest. i have all three due to the absence of advice on which was strongest. the corsini is very cleanly written and substantial in content with the chapters tight and complete. the corey is nearly as solid, and is written in a first person conversational style (kitchen table personal) which apparently many people seem to like in textbooks (including professors who continue to require such texts in their courses). for me, i don't like this style because i always feel like i'm really missing the meat of the topic being addressed and just getting, well, a style of textbook writing rather then solid content. regardless, it puts the content out there ultimately, though i wish he had named the through-composed case/client exemplar something other then "stan". finally, the the gurman text, it seemed to get a lot of attention but at best the chapters are surprisingly superficial in presenting the theories, and the case examples equally so as well, actually they were just plain and weak. it's like reading 'reader's digest', for those who know what that is. the authors had a good outline approach which they provided to each chapter author (one of the reasons i purchased it) but what they got back was just not that good.

Es un buen libro para comenzar a adentrarse en la psicoterapia , y un buen punto de referencia.

Really well written! It gives a brief yet complete summary of all the current theories in psychotherapy!

I have read most chapters of this edited book which covers the essential core ideas in psychotherapy from the three forces of psychology. Yet, it also goes farther than other books in exploring aspects of psychotherapy where theory has sometimes been ignored, i.e. brief therapy, group therapy and marital therapy. It is an advanced book for advanced graduate students because it is quite detailed. Because the chapters are written by different authors, they vary in approach but the differences are not a distraction because the quality is equally high.