[.ca] Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders, Second Edition (ISBN 1572308567)

Very well organized and researched:
I love Becks work in the field of Cognitive therapy. I have long had the trouble of finding a modality that effectivly works with personality disorders. I bought this book in an attempt to bridge my knowledge from purely Axis I to include Axis II disorders. The book goes through each and every personality disorder one at a time. This made it very easy to research one specific problem without having to sift through pages and pages of irrelevant information for the task at hand. Within each chapter Beck defines the typical automatic thoughts, or faulty reasoning, that is commonly associated with the personality disorders. He then gives broad treatment plans and goals to deal with the symptoms. Beck is very well organized and succienct. You will walk away from even a short reading of this book feeling more confident and better equipped to deal with the disorders without the usually doubts that maybe you didnt get the whole gist of what the author was trying to say. I felt that this was extremely well done. I also appreciate that Beck does not promise more then he can deliver and he is the first one to say that outcomes for Axis II disorders are still poor compared with Axis I.

Treating clients with personality disorders...:
This is a great book! It has a lot of practical information on how to approach treatment for a client who has a personality disorder. Included are case examples and problems that a therapist may have in treating clients. Additionally, the book includes specific intervention strategies and recommendations on how to develop a good working relationship. This is especially important, because a client's interpersonal problems will be played out during session with the therapist. I have used the information in this book to anticipate and prepare for specific issues that have arisen in session.

Classic cognitive therapy:
Beck and his group have written a classic in cognitive therapy with clear conceptulization of personality disorders. This is a difficult population to treat and Beck's work is clear and on target. Clincal examples enrich the theory making it an essential reference.