Deconstruction of PsychotherapyPaperback, 1 October 1996

Psychotherapists have a love-hate relationship with theories, often clinging to those that are unsatisfying and incomplete. Deconstruction of Psychotherapy examines the functions and failings of theory, and, most critically for clinicians, the gap between theory and practice. It looks at the purposes and perils of ardent allegiances irrespective of a particular school or strategy. This means examining the many uses and abuses of the clinician's belief system. While therapists need to be committed to a body of beliefs, an inability to look beyond it can be countertherapeutic; hiding behind a theory may be as bad as not having one to relinquish. Moreover, deconstruction of the positive and negative elements of theory reveals therapists' uncertainty as they acknowledge that one of their compasses resides somewhere between myth and truth.