Cognitive Therapy with Couples and Groups

It is with great pride and satisfaction that I welcome the publication of Cognitive Therapy with Couples and Groups. For several years, Arthur Freeman, Director of Clinical Services at the Center for Cognitive Therapy, has been a leader in attempting to extend a cognitive approach to new problems and new populations and to expand the approaches for treating the depressed outpatients for whom this approach was first developed. Dr. Freeman brought to the Center the full range and depth of a diverse clinical background which had and continues to broaden and enrich his work both as a therapist and as a teacher. I believe he has applied these dimensions of his experi- ence fully in developing and editing this volume. The chapters in this book clearly reflect those clinical problems that have attracted the keenest interest on the part of practicing cognitive therapist, which are encountered so frequently in the course of treating depression. The utilization of cognitive therapy with couples, families, groups, and in training is a clear example of this process, an intriguing topic in its own right. Conversely, coping with special clinical phe- nomena such as loneliness is a familiar problem to therapists of de- pressed patients. Laura Primakoff demonstrates her creativity and expe- rience in her treatment of this subject. Similarly, the chapters on al- coholism and agoraphobia are timely elaborations of the original cogni- tive model for the individual treatment of depression.