Practicing Cognitive Therapy

The editor of Practicing Cognitive Therapy: A Guide to Interventions, Robert L. Leahy, was educated at Yale University (B.A., M.S., Ph.D.), and at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, where he worked with Dr. Aaron Beck. He has taught at the New School for Social Research, New York University, and Hofstra University, and is currently Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College. In 1985, Dr. Leahy founded the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York City. Director of the Institute since its inception, he is also editor of the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy and author of Cognitive Therapy: Basic Principles and Applications.

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.