We began the planning of this project with ambitious goals in mind. Above all, we sought to create a textbook that would help psychotherapists treat their patients more effectively. At the same time, we sought to be comprehensive in scope and to provide an evidence base wherever possible to guide the reader. We were aware that most practitioners inhabit a culture of psychotherapeutic pluralism, and we wanted to create a volume where the major psychotherapeutic voices could be heard and valued. We were also aware of a major discrepancy between what typically transpires in academic and training centers and what is actually implemented in the real world of clinical practice. Pure forms of psychotherapy are taught and tested in randomized controlled trials in many universities throughout the world, but most practitioners of psychotherapy in busy practices end up creating their own amalgam of pure and mixed models over time, depending on context and patient need. With this reality in mind, we also wanted to create a text that would encourage an integrated approach to psychotherapy where appropriate.

As if these multiple agendas were not ambitious enough, we also wanted to appeal to a broad market, including students and trainees in psychiatry, psychology, social work, psychotherapeutic counseling, and psychiatric nursing. In addition to trainees, however, we wanted the book to be useable as a reference manual for practicing psychotherapists who might be experienced but nevertheless in need of expert opinion about particular types of psychotherapy or challenges posed by patients with specific problems or issues. Finally, in order to avoid geographical or ideological parochialism, we conceived of the book as an international effort and sought contributions from a multinational panel of experts.

These guiding principles were fundamental to the manner in which we organized the text. We decided to lay the foundation in Section I with chapters describing the major forms of psychotherapy, covering the history, philosophy, and general principles of each of the major therapeutic modalities.

Section II is devoted to the individual psychiatric disorders. Each chapter covers a specific disorder, describing the major theories, evidence base, key practice principles, and guidelines to handle difficult challenges. A practicing psychotherapist who encountered a new patient with bulimia, for example, might wish to consult our book for a refresher on an up-to-date approach to the psychotherapy of eating disorders from a cognitive, psychodynamic, and systemic perspective.

To ensure that each chapter in Section II covered the major theoretical and treatment approaches, we had to devise innovative forms of collaboration. Where, for example, could we find an expert who could write about family, group, and individual therapy for schizophrenia from both a cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic perspective? We realized that we would have to collect a group of colleagues to function as co-authors. Psychotherapists often think and work in splendid isolation, buttressed mainly by like-minded colleagues, where there is little cross-fertilization across modalities. Hence at times we had to facilitate an authorial ‘shotgun wedding’ in which we drew a number of unlikely bedfellows together for the purpose of writing a comprehensive chapter. To avoid theoretical bias, we tried to ensure that the diverse psychotherapeutic strategies were represented in a balanced way in each chapter.

We were pleasantly surprised that in many instances this innovative arrangement had positive results, and the co-authors were admirably collegial. In other instances, we felt it was preferable to opt for two different chapters on the same disorder. For example, we have one chapter on cognitive-behavior therapy for mood disorders and another on psychodynamic therapy for the same diagnostic group.

Next we recognized that the book would be enhanced by a fourth section with chapters focusing on special populations of patients who do not fit neatly into a diagnostically oriented chapter. Psychotherapy varies throughout the lifespan, so we included chapters on children and adolescents, older adults, and the developmental challenges of reproductive and working lives. We have also enlisted authors to write chapters on gender, cultural issues, psychotherapy for medical patients, and the role that sexual orientation plays in psychotherapy.

Our goal to be comprehensive was still not met after we had organized the first section, so we decided to add a sixth and final section that would cover special topics that are highly relevant to most psychotherapists in practice. These include integrating medication with psychotherapy, psychotherapy conducted under time constraints, forensic psychotherapy, ethics, the interface of neuroscience and psychotherapy, and psychotherapy supervision.

With persistence, mutual support, and a possibly exaggerated sense of responsibility, we editors have accomplished much of what we set out to do in the early planning stages. We are pleased with the result and think that a broad audience will benefit from the end product. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Martin Baum and Carol Maxwell at Oxford University Press for keeping us on track and providing moral support when the obstacles seemed overwhelming. We also want to thank Richard Marley for getting the project started and believing that it could be done. We also wish to acknowledge the hard work of each of the authors and their willingness to collaborate with enthusiasm and open-mindedness, even though they were writing with colleagues who spoke a different psychotherapeutic language. In sum, we hope that this volume, comprehensive in scope, integrative in spirit, while respectful of individual psychotherapeutic traditions, will make a useful contribution to a new era of psychotherapy, fit for the challenges and opportunities of mental health care in the twenty-first century.