Case Approach to Counseling and Psychotherapy

Designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice, this text presents vivid examples of how ten counselling approaches (psychoanalytic, Adlerian, existential, person-centred, Gestalt, reality, Behaviour, cognitive-behaviour, feminist, and family systems) work with a single hypothetical client, Ruth. By applying each theory to a single client, Dr. Corey illustrates each therapeutic approach in action and helps clear up misconceptions students might have about how a therapy actually works. Each of the ten theory chapters includes two cases (Ruth and one other), and commentary from the author and at least one other expert. Among the guest experts are William Glasser (founder of reality therapy), Arnold Lazarus (founder of multimodal therapy), and Albert Ellis (founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy). Each chapter follows a common format that allows readers to compare the approaches. In the final chapter, the author suggests how he would work with Ruth in an eclectic fashion, drawing on all ten approaches.