A handbook is supposed to cover ground, not to break ground. The fourth edition of Bergin and Garfield's
Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change does whatit is supposed to do, and it helps prepare the ground for some new planting. Previous editions have set a standard of scholarship for the field for more than two decades, and this final edtion (at least for the present editors, who are retiring and will not e d t a fifth edition, according to their prehce) maintains the standard.The invitation to write t h s review arrived just d e r the end of a five-week graduate-level seminar introducing psychotherapy research (d. Stiles et al., 1992), for which we and our classmates read parts of the new Handbook. Our syllabus began with three questions: (1) Does psychotherapy work? (2) Which is the best psychotherapy for each disorder? (3) What techniques or processes are most effective?As we read and talked, we formed different impres-
Address reprint requests and correspondence to William B.Stiles,
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