Theories of Psychotherapy & Counseling: Concepts and Cases, 5th Edition

I bought this book years ago when I was in grad school, and I still refer to it from time to time to refresh my memory. It is well laid out and easy to understand.

If you are a HS major, consider yourself lucky if you ever need this book. It is not as dry as it looks. It takes a lot to motivate me to read my other textbooks but this one just flows. I can say I like reading it. Great scenarios and examples and dialogue. You'll be counseling folks in no time.

This is a great textbook. I used it for my Theories of Counseling course in my Master's Counseling program. It provides a nice overview of each theory and even includes a number of alternative/less used theories. It is organized well and follows a standard format throughout the entire text.

This book quickly and briefly describes different theories. It will get you started. Once you find a theory you like you will need to read more indepth books, but this text will give you an exellent intro to theories, explain briefly treatment methods that go with each theory, and has helpful examples.

I will continue to refer to this throughout my practice. It is not exhaustive, of course, but really seems to get all the good stuff. It's readable, too. This is one you don't want to sell back to the bookstore if you are a psych student.

Anyone who is studying to become a school counselor or counselor should purchase this book. This is one book I will not sell. It goes over all the psychological theories and theorists.

Full disclosure: I don't have a lot to compare this to. The book does cover the major theories of counseling from a Western historical perspective, and is fairly comprehensive and very simple to read/navigate. I bought the Kindle version, which I'd highly recommend (but note that some sections were removed in the Kindle ver. due to "copyright" issues). The book does have a chapter at the end discussing "other therapies", which acknowledges the lack of coverage of more recent developments as well as the "Asian therapies". There's a LOT of over-generalization in the latter category, unfortunately. The writing quality in the last few chapters declines noticeably, and is sometimes almost shockingly bad - not sure if these were written by a different contributing author?

I liked this book because is an easy read and easy to follow. I think I will continue to use it once school is over as a reference.