It is rare to find a thoughtful and scholarly blend of theoretical astuteness and clinical wisdom in a single book about addiction. The author accomplishes this goal by the skillful application of integral theory as a framework for understanding addiction and its treatment. An Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment belongs on the shelf of every psychotherapist who treats addiction or is interested in the topic. -Philip J. Flores, Ph.D., ABPP, author of Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations (3rd ed.) and Addiction as an Attachment DisorderAn Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment is a brilliant overview of a truly integral or comprehensive approach to what has now become a crisis level epidemic in America (and indeed, much of the world). The great difficulty, up to this point, is that there are several different existing approaches to addiction and its treatment, and unfortunately none of them have worked nearly as well as it was hoped they would. This has left the field facing an epidemic with no agreed upon solution.Guy du Plessis takes one of the most comprehensive metatheories now in existence-that of Integral Metatheory-and shows how it can indeed integrate and synthesize virtually every major approach to addiction now existing. The immediate benefit of such a far-reaching approach is a direct application to actual cases of addiction itself, and wherever this has been tried so far, the results are astonishingly effective.This book is for, first of all, either those who treat, or those who suffer from, a specific type of addiction. Guy walks us through a clear, easy to understand, step by step introduction to each of the major areas of addic-2010). Furthermore, studies have shown that many existing rehabilitation programs may be no more successful than the spontaneous remission that occurs in the untreated population (Alexander, 2008(Alexander, , 2010. Despite the magnitude of addiction's negative consequences for individual and civic well-being, we have failed to make adequate progress in controlling or preventing the spread of addiction on a global level.Alexander (2010) lamented that a "century of scientific research has 1 The contents of chapter one to four of this book is an abridged version of my master's dissertation (Du Plessis, 2014b) as well as articles published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (Du Plessis, 2010, 2012a, 2012b, 2014a, reprinted with permission. When relevant, I will reference the sections of the text that were originally printed in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, but will not reference the sections from my master's dissertation as this will unnecessarily clutter the text.In Chapter 1, a brief overview of the most prominent etiological models of addiction are presented. The discussion is structured under the following headings: genetic/physiological models, social/environmental models, personality/intrapsychic models, coping/social learning models, conditioning/ reinforcement behavioral models, compulsive/excessive behavior models, existent...

In this essay I argue that an adequate understanding of addiction and its recovery should be informed by an existential understanding of human nature. I provide a brief overview of an existential perspective/foundation of addiction and recovery, which will contextualize the remainder of the essay. I then present a case study of how the six-step philosophical practice method of Logic-Based Therapy can assist with issues that often arise in addiction treatment framed through an existential perspective.

In this essay I explore the notion of philosophy as a way of life as a recovery pathway for individuals in addiction recovery. My hypothesis is that philosophy as a way of life can be a compelling, and legitimate recovery pathway for individuals in addiction recovery, as one of many recovery pathways. I will focus on logic-based therapy (LBT) applied in the context of addiction recovery. The aim of presenting a case study is to show how a client receiving LBT is provided with techniques and a worldview that can contribute to a philosophically oriented recovery program. In the case study the client was advised to apply the moral philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as an uplifting philosophical framework to counteract his unproductive worldview and fallacious thinking. Considering that there is an ostensibly low efficacy rate for the treatment of addiction, articulating the value of philosophy as a way of life as a recovery pathway provides a conceptual and methodological framework for the development of novel philosophically-based addiction treatment and recovery-oriented programs—thus expanding the treatment and recovery options available for those seeking recovery from addiction.

This article explores the utility of the philosopher and Commonwealth statesman General Jan Smuts’ theory of Holism within the context of philosophical practice. It is common practice that philosophical counsellors or practitioners apply the work of philosophers to inspire, educate and guide their counselees in the philosophical counseling process. In this essay we will briefly explore Smuts’ theory of Holism as a potentially uplifting philosophy which can be of use for philosophical practitioners to guide their counselees “for confronting problems of living." We highlight that Smuts’ contribution to philosophy and psychology is often not adequately credited, and it is therefore not surprising that, to the best of our knowledge, Smuts’ theory of Holism has not yet been discussed in the context of philosophical counseling. We begin the essay by providing a brief historical view and outline of Smuts’ theory of Holism, and his influence on Anglo-Saxon psychology. We then discuss several foundational concepts that underlie Smuts’ theory of Holism as articulated and developed in his book Holism and Evolution.

This essay addresses the notion of self-deception as articulated by Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre. More specifically, I will critically assess Sartre’s notion of ‘bad faith’ (_mauvaise foi_) as a critique of Freud’s depth-psychological account of self-deception. Sartre’s main objection to Freud’s account of self-deception rests on his argument that for self-deception to occur there needs to be a conscious awareness of the coexistence of mutually incompatible beliefs, and that Freud had obscured this fact by splitting the self and with a mixture of jargon. In conclusion, I suggest a speculative and tentative hypothesis for self-deception that suggests an alternative to Freud and Sartre’s account of self-deception, one that views the self or self-system as having a disposition for self-deception when understood as having the capacity for fluid working self-states that are ‘expandable’ and ‘contractable’ that differ in self-complexity.