Psychotherapists and critics of psychotherapy outline their views and answer their adversaries. The critics draw attention to the inadequacy of research validating the results of psychotherapy and argue that no treatment at all may be as effective as therapy, that some people's experience of therapy is harmful, that there is a preciousness and pretentiousness about many psychotherapists, that psychotherapists may be flawed and exploitative, that psychotherapy is anachronistically detached from the new-paradigm views, and that psychotherapy embodies a form of psychological reductionism that weakens its credibility. The object of this book is to reduce the antagonism between the two camps so that future debate can be more constructive than hitherto.

The contributors are Michael Barkham, Ian Craib, Gill Edwards, Albert Ellis, Hans Eysenck, Stephen Frosh, Sol Garfield, Ernest Gellner, Jeremy Holmes, Paul Kline, Katherine Mair, Jeffrey Masson, David Pilgrim, Jeff Roberts, John Rowan, David Shapiro and Stuart Sutherland.