ABSTRACT
The decade preceding the publication of this book has seen a remarkable turnaround in professional attitudes towards the psychological treatment of severe mental illness. Whereas, before, most psychologists and psychiatrists were pessimistic about the possibility of helping psychotic patients other than by drug treatment, the last few years have seen important innovations in the psychological treatment of delusions, hallucinations and other symptoms previously assumed to be the spasms of a disordered brain. The roots of these developments can be traced in earlier experiments-for example the simple behaviour modification programmes introduced by Skinnerian psychologists in the late 1960s (Ayllon & Azrin, 1968; Paul & Lenz, 1977) and the more sophisticated behavioural family therapy interventions pioneered during the late 1970s and later (Falloon et al., 1985; Leff, Kuipers, Berkowitz, Eberlein-Fries, & Sturgeon, 1982; Tarrier et al., 1988). Nonetheless, the idea that individual therapy might ameliorate the core symptoms of psychosis, rather than merely enable the patients to cope better with their illness, is a relatively new one. Of course, pessimists remain, notably in the United States of America, where the idea that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are varieties of brain disease that have no substantial psychological component continues to hold sway (Bellack, 1992). However, in Britain and continental Europe, for the most part, individual psychological treatments are rapidly becoming seen as an indispensable part of the therapeutic armoury.
