Books
A short reading list, with one sentence on what each book is for.
The book that put a psychotherapy vocabulary into ordinary speech.
Script theory, published after Berne's death. The most substantial of the three.
Operant conditioning established experimentally. The behavioural half of CBT starts here.
Skinner's general statement, and the clearest case for the behavioural position.
Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition
Joseph Wolpe · Stanford University Press · 1958
Systematic desensitisation. The first behavioural therapy with an outcome record.
Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy
Albert Ellis · Citadel Press · 1962
Rational emotive behaviour therapy, and the first sustained cognitive challenge to analysis.
The cognitive model stated whole, by a clinician who trained as an analyst.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura · Prentice Hall · 1977
Modelling and self-efficacy. The bridge between behaviourism and cognition.
Cognitive Therapy of Depression
Aaron Temkin Beck, Augustus John Rush, Brian Shaw, Gary Emery · Guilford Press · 1979
Publisher pageThe manual that made CBT testable, and therefore fundable.
Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder
Marsha Linehan · Guilford Press · 1993
Publisher pageDBT. The first treatment to show results with a group most services had given up on.
The client-facing CBT workbook, and the one most often handed across the room.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Steven Hayes, Kirk Strosahl, Kelly Wilson · Guilford Press · 1999
Publisher pageThe third wave stated in full. Acceptance and values rather than disputation.
Pragmatics of Human Communication
Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, Don deAvila Jackson · W. W. Norton · 1967
Publisher pageOne cannot not communicate. The Palo Alto group's founding statement.
The double bind, and the intellectual source of most systemic thinking.
Structural family therapy, with transcripts that still teach better than most training films.
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice
Murray Bowen · Jason Aronson · 1978
Differentiation of self and the multigenerational transmission process.
Links private and political violence, and sets out the three stages of recovery.
EMDR from its originator. Included because the evidence base is now hard to ignore.
Somatic Experiencing, and the argument that trauma is held in the body's incomplete responses.
The book clients most often arrive holding. Contested in places and worth knowing well for that reason.