What Works for Whom?: A Critical Review of Psychotherapy Research

Rating:
Summary: The best summary of psychotherapy research
Review: The book by Roth and Fonagy is a comprehensive and balanced summary of research on psychotherapy. Principly it covers outcome studies and is organised according to DSMIV diagnostic groups. It also covers a bit of process research, particularly the research on therapeutic alliance. There is much to recomnd the book: it is accurate, comprehensive, well written and balanced. It also offeres excellent summaries and impications ections at the end of each chapter. I don't know of a better summary of psychotherapy outcome research.

Rating:
Summary: What's effective and what's true need not be the same
Review: The Nobel Prize for Medicine has been given to psychiatrists three times--once for lobotomies, once for injecting tertiary syphilitics with the blood of malaria sufferers, and once for discovering certain neurotransmitters. Both of the first "accomplishments" were hailed to such heights solely for their clinical effectiveness, since no one even pretended that science could explicate their effectiveness.

In all of medicine (except, apparently, psychiatry), a distinction between science--which tries to understand what is true--and clinical studies--which ascertain what works--is fairly standard. That's because "what works" may be ill-understood or completely misunderstood and ultimately not very wise--an idea need not be true to be effective, a procedure need not be based on true ideas to "work," and what "works" may turn out to have undesirable effects on other systems.

If you are unconcerned with the distinction between truth and effectiveness, this book is very good. If, however, you know that historically very terrible things have been shown to "work" to the satisfaction of the doctors, you may find the emphasis on effectiveness very troubling.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for graduate therapy course or as a teaching tool.
Review: This book would lend itself well to a research oriented graduate course on clinical psychology and treatment. It is also an excellent resource for writing lectures. Practicing clinicians should find it invaluable. It is concise and synthesizes an extensive body of research well (with appropriate and useful references). Selling points include specifics on clinical description, prevalence, co-morbidity, and history for each disorder covered. Reviews (and summaries) of treatment efficacy are excellent. -W. Born