Psychotherapy: A Very Short Introduction

Psychotherapy and counselling are now widely available to help people overcome emotional and psychological difficulties in their lives. They involve spending time with a professional in an emotionally safe and structured relationship to explore and express the issues that cause distress and difficulty, whether long term self-doubts, relationship problems, or the impact of a trauma or crisis. As a society, we now take this focus on talking through and understanding our identity and relationships for granted, but it is hardly more than a century old. In this Very Short Introduction, Tom Burns and Eva Burns-Lundgren trace the development of psychotherapy from its origins in Freud's psychoanalysis to the range of different approaches - counselling, cognitive behaviour therapy, and other time-limited therapies, mindfulness, group and family therapies, and many more. Describing the processes central to them all and highlighting their differences, they demonstrate what problems each therapy are best suited for.

Eva Burns-Lundgren trained as a social worker in Sweden in the 1970s, and went on to practise as a generic and mental health social worker in the UK, before retraining as a psychotherapist in the 1990s. She is accredited as psychotherapist in the UK with the UKCP and ACAT, and also with the European Association for Psychotherapy. She has practised within university and national health service settings and for 10 years ran the university accredited Cognitive Analytic Therapy course in Oxford. She is now retired from the NHS but continues to practise privately and in a trainer and examiner capacity.