Controversies in Psychotherapy and Counselling

Colin Feltham is series editor of Professional Skills for Counsellors and Short Introductions to the Therapy Professions series, co-editor of SAGE Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy and author of several SAGE texts, including What is Counselling?

Controversies in Psychotherapy and Counselling - Colin Feltham PART ONE: THEORETICAL ISSUES Does the Unconscious Mind Really Exist? - E M Thornton On the Existence of the Unconscious - Tim Kendall and Peter Speedwell Primal Therapies - Stillborn Theories - Jennifer M Cunningham The Trauma of Birth - John Rowan False Memories - A Peripheral Issue? - Roger Scotford Believing Patients - Majorie Orr PART TWO: CLINICAL ISSUES The Ineffectiveness of Psychotherapy - W M Epstein It Has Been Amply Demonstrated that Psychotherapy Is Effective - Stephen Saunders The Main Change Agent in Effective Psychotherapy Is Specific Technique and Skill - Albert Ellis The Main Change Agent in Psychotherapy Is the Relationship between Therapist and Client - David Howe Deconstructing Diagnosis - Ian Parker Psychopathological Practice Psychopathology Is a Reality and Psychodiagnosis Is a Necessity - Norman D Macaskill The Limitations of Boundaries - Derek Gale Maintaining Boundaries in Psychotherapy - David Livingstone Smith A View from Evolutionary Psychoanalysis PART THREE: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES Personal Therapy as a Training Requirement - Ann Macaskill The Lack of Supporting Evidence In Defence of Therapy for Training - Valerie Sinason Becoming an Effective Psychotherapist or Counsellor - Jim McLellan Are Training and Supervision Necessary? Training and Supervision Make a Difference - Mary Connor Against and beyond Core Theoretical Models - Colin Feltham Training in a Core Theoretical Model Is Essential - Sue Wheeler Professionalization of Therapy by Registration Is Unnecessary, Ill-Advised and Damaging - Richard Mowbray Registration Benefits and Is Necessary to the Public and the Profession - Digby Tantam Psychotherapy and Counselling Are Indistinguishable - Brian Thorne There Are Real Differences between Psychotherapy and Counselling - Jan Harvie-Clarke PART FOUR: SOCIAL ISSUES Stress Discourse and Individualization - Tim Newton Employee Assistance Programmes and Stress Counselling - John Berridge At a Crossroads? Psychotherapy and Counselling as Unproven, Overblown and Unconvincing - Alex Howard Psychotherapy as Essential Care - Jeremy Holmes Mind at the End of Its Tether - Fay Weldon Counselling and Psychotherapy as Enabling and Empowering - Sheelagh Strawbridge

`The book is written in a lucid conersational style and while it is accessible to non-specialists, few concessions are made for those who do not share the underlying tenets on which it is based.... Controversies in Psychotherapy and Counselling stands as a refreshing antidote to all those mutually affirming books on therapy. A little more grit of this sort may just help to make therapy the mature and socially beneficial pearl it potentially could be' - Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy `Editor Colin Feltham's choice of topics shows an astute, on the ground awareness of the issues that dog the industry, while still making lively reading' - New Therapist `My congratulations to Colin Feltham for assembling a set of contentious issues and lively authors which together made me forget my surroundings' - Person-Centred Practice