Eight Principles for a Modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy
Book Review: Eight Principles for a Modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Re-Imagining CBT in Clinical Training by Scott Temple and R. Trent Codd III
Eight Principles for a Modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Re-Imagining CBT in Clinical Training by Scott Temple and R. Trent Codd III represents an important moment in the world of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies. This book has the power to revolutionize the way we practice CBT. I spoke with Scott Temple about this project many years ago and recall how deeply I felt at the time about the importance of this book. I have long thought of Scott Temple and Trent Codd as two of the most brilliant minds in modern therapy. Their knowledge of the intricacies of cognitive behavioral theories and associated protocols is unmatched. Further, they possess something that’s quite rare. They understand the history, culture, and events surrounding the foundation and evolution of the cognitive behavioral therapies and also have a clear understanding of and competence with cutting edge innovations within the field. Their expertise spans generations. This book represents a distillation of their wisdom and knowledge. I was thrilled to hear about it, and I was even more excited to read it. I love this book, and I know that you will too!
As someone who truly loves therapy, I often think about the evolution of CBT. The earliest success of CBT for depression resulted in its proliferation. As it spread, it matured. CBT was adapted for a multitude of diagnoses including anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders, personality disorders, and psychosis. It also evolved in form. Some have spoken of the waves of CBT, those characterized as behavioral, cognitive, and mindfulness and acceptance based.
Different iterations of cognitive and behavioral therapies emerged, as was the alphabet soup that followed. Treatment developers and researchers focused on how the different branches of the CBTs compared to one another. Simultaneously, many therapists learned to move from branch to branch, capturing tools and strategies to help their clients (and themselves).
Over the decades, countless brilliant and passionate people developed specialized approaches to CBT. Scientific work has shown that these approaches are effective in treating a wide variety of problems, including psychosocial stressors and resilience building. Millions of people have benefitted from these efforts.
From these conditions, many therapists developed competencies across the different related therapies like Beckian CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy. As we’ve learned these different approaches, we’ve yearned to know, “How might we go about combining these tools to best help the people we work with?” Certainly, several universals exist across these therapies. How do they fit together?
This book represents an integration of these differing models. CBT evolved as it spread, and now it’s being gathered back together to represent a robust and pragmatic transdiagnostic therapy that is rooted in depth, compassion, curiosity, recovery, and empiricism. This book provides a framework for a psychological understanding of the factors that are implicated in the kind of suffering we see in our consultation rooms. And it shows how to create case formulations that allow for disciplined integration of the many techniques that have evolved across multiple models of Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
The authors wrote a book that is amazingly accessible and clinically oriented. The skills and ideas are immediately usable. This book represents the type of therapist I aspire to be. I thoroughly love this book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
This book also heralds in a new book series for Routledge. Modern Integrative CBT is a series developed specifically for books just like this one. The series is focused on shaping the future of CBT that is focused on high quality therapy that includes a robust integration of strategies that work and a lot of heart. Keep an eye out for other great titles just like this one.
Book Description
Eight Principles for a Modern CBT is a training guide for both new and experienced clinicians who want to understand and apply the newest developments in cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s a hands-on manual that helps readers sort through competing models for addressing cognitive change, emotion processing, and behavior change. When is acceptance indicated, and how does one “do” acceptance in therapy? How can mindfulness be incorporated in ways that are brief, simple to teach, and effective? How should therapists use clients’ values and hopes as guides for setting a course in therapy, rather than focusing exclusively on medicalized diagnoses? How does one tailor treatment for varying levels of severity of impairment? In these pages, readers will find answers to and insights on these questions and much more, including perspectives on evolutionary psychology and newer, process-based models that put human suffering in a less medicalized and stigmatizing frame.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Eight Organizing Principles for CBT
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Principle #1: Normalizing Human Suffering
Chapter 3. Principle #2: Transdiagnostic Processes
Chapter 4. Principle #3: A Focus on Client Strengths and Values
Chapter 5. Principle #4: The Use of Guided Discovery and Validation Strategies in Fostering the Treatment Relationship
Chapter 6. Principle #5: Balancing Acceptance, Mindfulness, and Change Processes
Chapter 7. Principle #6: Balancing Cognitive and Experiential Interventions in CBT
Chapter 8. Principle #7: Self Processes
Chapter 9. Principle #8: A Contextual Account of Human Functioning
Part 2: Case Applications
Chapter 10. Introduction and Format of Presentations
Chapter 11. Case #1: A Desperate Mother
Chapter 12. Case #2: The Lone Ranger
Chapter 13. Case #3: A Case of Coke
Chapter 14. Case #4: Parents of a Self-Injuring Teen
Chapter 15. Case #5: The Case of Efran―Finding Meaning
Critics’ Reviews
“Eight Principles for a Modern CBT provides clinicians with a humane, sophisticated, realistic, flexible, and practical guide to using a wide range of CBT approaches. Written in a user-friendly style, the years of clinical wisdom gained by treating patients and training therapists comes through in every chapter. Specific case examples illustrate the real room of therapy without a rigid fidelity to a therapeutic model. What I loved about this book was the openness to other approaches, the appreciation and validation of human suffering as an inevitable part of the human condition, and the practical insights and metaphors that the authors provide throughout.”
Robert L. Leahy, PhD, director, American Institute for Cognitive Therapy and clinical professor, Weill Cornell Medical College
“Temple and Codd address a persistent challenge for training clinicians in cognitive-behavior therapy, namely, how do we give them the most effective tools in the most efficient timeframe? Eight Principles for a Modern CBT isolates the central concepts that form the foundation for clinicians to maximize the efficacy of this complex treatment model. The rich case illustrations provide readers with details on the full gamut of CBT applications with adults. The book should be seriously considered for any professional training clinicians in this approach. It is also as an excellent resource for seasoned experts who need a quick reference for problems that might not be a routine part of their everyday practice.”
Dean McKay, PhD, ABPP, professor of psychology, Fordham University, past president, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and past president, Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology
“This is a book that aspires to be the ‘big tent’ under which all the diverse forms of cognitive and behavioral therapies are described and integrated. And it succeeds. Although some may want a deeper dive into each—and ample references are provided for those readers—most will find the clinical integration of these approaches extremely useful. For teachers, this book provides the next step for students who struggle to make sense of how to navigate so many forms and waves of CBT without rigidly adhering to a specific school of thought. For clinicians, the book validates the need to do what works in complex clinical situations. I will use it with my PG4s.”
Donna M. Sudak, MD, past president, AADPRT, professor of psychiatry and vice chair for education, Drexel University, and general psychiatry residency program director, Phoenixville Hospital – Tower Health
Buy the book from the publisher
note: My book review is also found as the foreword in the beginning of the book.
This sounds great (and needed…and timely).