ABSTRACT

Barbara Cordon's fully justified lament about her harrowing experiences of various forms of psychiatric treatment, which included psychotherapy, may at first sight seem to be a strange starting point for a review of psychotherapy research, but I would justify it simply on the grounds that such impassioned statements draw our attention to the urgency of taking psychotherapy research seriously. Barbara Gordon was lucky in discovering a committed psychotherapist who helped her heal her deep psychological wounds but her suffering at the hands of incompetent therapists raises a number of crucial issues which need to be addressed by all practising psychotherapists.