Philosophy and Psychotherapy

Edward Erwin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, and is the author or editor of a number of books, the most recent of which is the Freud Encyclopedia (1994).

• PART ONE: FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONSAutonomy, Free Choice and the Possibility of a Psychotherapeutic ScienceValues and MoralsThe Self in PsychotherapyPostmodernist Clinical EpistemologyA CritiquePART TWO: PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC PARADIGMSBehavior Modification and the New BehaviorismCognitive Therapy and Behavior TherapyPsychoanalysis and the Psychodynamic TherapiesEPILOGUEThe Crisis in Psychotherapy

`Erwin′s argumentative skills and knowledge of the literature are remarkable and most of his original claims are persuasive....The merit of the analysis Erwin offers is to provide a well-informed and accessible account of the current state of psychotherapy, its history and its philosophical grounds′ - Metapsychology Online`Psychotherapy urgently needs to learn from philosophy... considering how much philosophy has to say about the human issues that psychotherapists work with and how much it can contributre in terms of clarity, consistency and breadth and depth of thinking about all this... Erwin′s book makes philosophy accessible to psychotherapists. He shows how important philosophical analysis is in order to gain clarity about the theories and methods of psychotherapy... Erwin′s book is an excellent antidote to psychotherapeutic complacency. It is a book that requires one to question oneself as a psychotherapist and which reveals how much remains hidden underneath professional pomposity and dogmatism... I would certainly recommend this book most strongly to all psychotherapists and counsellors, most especially to trainees′ - The European Journal of Psychotherapy, Counselling & Health`[The book] includes detailed and illuminating discussions about efficacy, the placebo effect and therapist "expertise"... For those readers who favour an empirical-scientific approach to counselling and therapy, and who view therapy, at least potentially or in principle, as an objective science, this will no doubt be a very useful and informative book... We should be grateful that Erwin has set out more fully than anyone to date the specifically philosophical case for a "science of therapy"; and those of a New Paradigm persuasion at least now know the nature of the arguments they will have to refute in order to sustain their position. I look forward with eager anticipation to their efforts, and to an emerging and fruitful engagement between philosophy and therapy - for both have a great deal to learn from each other′ - Counselling, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling`Erwin′s analyses are interesting and intellectually provoking′ - British Psychological Society History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter`Stimulating, exciting - and not for the faint-hearted′ - Professor Windy Dryden, Goldsmiths College, University of London