There is a curious division between psychiatrists and those members of the general public who have a reading interest in mental disorders. A very high proportion of professional reading is scientific – either genetic or pharmacological, based on the assumption that mental disorders have an organic basis and require organic treatments. A very high proportion of the public interest is based on the idea that talking and understanding are much more important, and that physical treatments should be regarded with grave suspicion. Thus, there have been huge outcries over treatments which do actually have some proven effectiveness, such as ECT or antidepressants, based on a widespread misunderstanding of scientific evidence, while, on the other hand, there is a total lack of public interest in studies which show the ineffectiveness of, say, psychoanalysis. Cognitive behaviour therapy, or CBT for short, is unique among the non‐pharmacological, “talking” treatments currently on offer, in that it is the only one that, so far, has been scientifically demonstrated to have any beneficial effect. For this reason, if for no other, CBT is the flavour of the month among medical practitioners of all sorts, recommended as the best treatment for anything from mumps to a broken leg. A few years ago only a few odd (sometimes very odd) medical students could be persuaded to take any interest at all in psychiatry. Now I am finding ordinary medical undergraduates, and student nurses whose ambitions have taken them beyond prescribing, queuing up to reserve books on CBT in the Institute of Psychiatry library.
This increase in interest has, of course, been matched by a proportional increase in the professional literature. Among the more prolific authors and editors in the field is Arthur Freeman. The earliest book of his that we have in stock, and still regularly in demand, is Cognitive Therapy with Couples and Groups (Freeman, 1983) and the latest we have on order is Cognitive‐Behavioral Interventions in Educational Settings (Mennuti et al., 2005) and there are a whole string of similar titles in between. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with publishing a large number of books with related titles and overlapping contents. There is always a risk, however, of an author or editor getting into a production line mode, ceasing to take a genuine interest in the particular book in hand.
I was fortunately able to discuss this book with a table full of trainee clinical psychologists in the Institute of Psychiatry canteen, and subsequently was able to have a brief discussion of it with Paul Salkovskis, a leading British light in the field of CBT. I am quite sorry to say that the general opinion of this particular book was unfavourable. Neither could I as an information provider, nor the students as trainees, nor Professor Salkovskis as an expert trainer, quite see what the book is for. None of us could envisage a situation in which it would be our best or first port of call in answer to any particular query. There are a lot of useful entries in it – well‐written, well‐referenced short essays of two or three pages on a range of subjects of interest to clinical psychologists, which would have been creditable contributions to a general encyclopaedia of psychology or to a broad‐ranging textbook of clinical treatments. But these do not really add up to a coherent coverage of the field of CBT that would satisfy either an expert or trainee, or a general enquirer with little prior knowledge of the subject. There are alarming omissions in the list of topics covered, and a lack of any feeling for the history of the subject – just one casual, almost irrelevant, mention of Hans Eysenck for example, who has as fair a claim as any to be a scientific founder of CBT. The alphabetical ordering is thoughtless – Therapeutic Assessment – the Rorschach in Cognitive‐Behavioral Practice is entered under T for Therapeutic rather than under R for Rorschach for example, with no cross‐references and what is quite clearly a computer‐produced index. The trainees I spoke to recommended some of Professor Freeman's other books, notably Clinical Applications of Cognitive Therapy (Freeman, 2004) which they all seem to have used, but they could not envisage a situation in which they would turn first to this encyclopedia. I regularly get requests, usually from distraught parents, asking me to recommend a basic guide to some condition or treatment, but, again, I cannot see a general enquirer going into a public library for information on CBT, seizing on this book, and coming out with any real idea of what CBT actually is.
My advisers were all shocked at the price of this slim volume. Over £150 for 450 pages of fairly basic text, without any expensive illustrations etc, seemed to all of us to be exorbitant. If the same amount of material was arranged more usefully in textbook form, a publisher could not expect to charge this much for it. There is clearly a huge profit to be made from fairly small sales of high‐priced specialist encyclopedias, judging by the number of different publishers that have been churning them out recently. You can buy quite a lot of small general interest books for that money.
Having decided that we were not enthusiastic about this particular book however, the next question I put to my advisers was what would they recommend instead? Here we were on less firm ground. None of us could think of a book called something like What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy? aimed at the general reader. There are a large number of books aimed at the lay reader dealing with particular disorders. Most notably we recommended the Oxford University Press “The Facts” series, many of which cover applications of CBT in detail. My advisers particularly mentioned Obsessive‐Compulsive Disorder (DeSilva and Rachman, 2004) and Panic Disorder (Rachman and DeSilva, 2004) in this context. Similarly, the Sheldon Press Overcoming Common Problems series is well worth looking at. You could probably buy a complete set of either of these for £150, and end up with a set of useful publications, which could be gradually updated rather than spend the lot on a single book which, by the nature of the subject, will rapidly date.
It is clear that the publishers have identified a gap in the literature, and that they have found an editor and contributors who have an interest in communicating information on the subject, but, unfortunately, partly owing to the inelastic nature of the encyclopedia format, the end result does not properly fill the gap. We would recommend public reference libraries to buy a range of books on CBT for mental health workers, and selections from the more sensible self‐help series mentioned, but would not particularly recommend spending a substantial amount on this single volume.
