Books
A short reading list, with one sentence on what each book is for.
Nancy McWilliams · Guilford Press · 1994
The most useful single book for a trainee. Character understood rather than merely coded.
Alfred Adler · Oneworld Publications · 1927
Inferiority, compensation and social interest. Adler's ideas are now so absorbed they read as common sense.
Erich Fromm · Henry Holt · 1941
Why people give away the freedom they have won. Written in 1941 and still uncomfortable.
Erik H. Erikson · W. W. Norton · 1950
The eight stages, and the introduction of culture and history into developmental theory.
Karen Horney · W. W. Norton · 1950
The tyranny of the should. Horney's mature account of the idealised self.
Harry Stack Sullivan · W. W. Norton · 1953
Personality as what happens between people. The root of the interpersonal school.
Carl R. Rogers · Robinson · 1951
The method set out in full, with transcripts. More rigorous than its reputation suggests.
Frederick Perls, Ralph Hefferline, Paul Goodman · Souvenir Press · 1951
The founding text of Gestalt. Half theory, half exercises the reader is meant to do.
Carl R. Rogers · Robinson · 1961
The necessary and sufficient conditions, and the book that made them common currency.
Eugene T. Gendlin · Rider · 1978
The felt sense. Grew directly out of research into why some therapies worked and others did not.