Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis

By James O. Prochaska and John C. Norcross

Book Overview

Comprehensive, systematic, and balanced, Systems of Psychotherapy uses a wealth of clinical cases to help readers understand the major psychotherapies, including psychodynamic, existential, experiential, interpersonal, exposure, behavioral, cognitive, third wave, systemic, multicultural, and integrative. The tenth edition of this landmark text thoroughly analyzes 15 leading systems of psychotherapy and briefly surveys another 32, providing students and practitioners with a broad overview of the discipline. The book explores each system's theory of personality, theory of psychopathology, and resulting therapeutic process and relationship. Through these explorations, the authors clearly demonstrate how psychotherapy systems agree on the processes producing change while diverging on the elements in need of change. Additionally, the authors present the central limitations, outcome research, and future directions of each system of psychotherapy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0197774903
• ISBN13: 9780197774908
• Release Date: July 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 600 Pages
• Weight: 2.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 7.3" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

Happy

I was very please with the book and the great shape it was in when I received it. It did take 5 weeks to get here but it was over the holiday season so I wasn't surprised. I did contact them to check on it's status when it wasn't here yet and they got back to me within 24 hours and then wrote me again to make sure I had received it which I think is great customer service. I would buy from this company again.

Still exciting, still flawed

I have taught graduate courses using different editions of this book for 10 years. I still see no other text that attempts to point out the many parallel ideas that appear (using different words) in the mainstream approaches. Yes, it's hard reading, and yes, they could make it a bit more reader-friendly. And why, when two White Guys are writing about the history of White Men's Theories, don't they balance things by giving women and minorities more than a token voice in the book?

Standard yet different

The authors adequately aquaint the reader with a broad overview of the main theories of psychotherapy and use a language that is accessible to the advanced reader. They also provide personal examples from thier clinical experience that give life to the theories. Brief biographies of the originators of each school of therapy are provided at the beginning of each section which adds an additional personal touch to the theories. Although not extensive, the authors attempt to give the reader empirical data that demonstrates each theory's effectiveness in treating specific disorders. Overall, this is a compact yet comprehensive book that does what a book of its kind sets out to do: find a balance between breadth and depth.

A major step toward integration of the psychotherapies

In this, their 4th edition, Prochaska and Norcross have begun to achieve their goal--to make the cross-theoretical themes stronger than the language-bound and often confusing differences among psychotherapy theorists. As they clearly demonstrate, the similar themes among theories of talk therapy are strong and the differences among the leading theories are often subtle.My graduate students, though, seem to still need some help at times sorting out the authors' voices from those of the original theorists. I hope to see future editions in which the readers' confusions are anticipated better and there is a better "safety net" to hang onto when the illusion of theoretical certainty is withdrawn.