CBT has come a long way since 1979 when Beck's groundbreaking book on treating depression appeared. CBT has established itself as the most effective therapy for a range of conditions, and one of its great strengths is that it is always evolving. We've discovered that challenging negative thoughts verbally may not be particularly effective or even necessary for many clients. We've discovered that changing our relationship to the contents of cognition is often crucial, rather than changing particular thoughts. According to Steven Hayes among others, we're now in the Third Wave of cognitive therapies, where methods such as mindfulness practice seem perfectly at home within CBT's broad church.
Dr Lusia Stopa's CBT credentials are firmly rooted in the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre orthodoxy. Like others there, she's been endlessly curious about how to approach client's problems in novel ways, and has long been intrigued by the potential clinical power of image transformation. Dr Ann Hackman at Oxford has written and presented workshops on working with imagery in CBT for years, and has inspired many of us to experiment with imagery work in our clinical practice. What we have lacked though is a sound textbook rich in theory-practice links to enrich our understanding. This book offers interested clinicians a thorough introduction to the whole topic of working with images in CBT.
The topics covered offer innovative treatment ideas to clinicians working in a wide range of disorders, from social anxiety to bipolar disorder. Imagery rescripting, which has drawn together key researchers within CBT, and is currently producing very encouraging results in clinical trials is described in several chapters, but will hopefully have a chapter by Smucker in the next edition, along with one on imagery and schema change. I particularly enjoyed Stopa's exploration of imagery and threatened self in Chapter 1, and also her comprehensive overview of clinical approaches that work on images in Chapter 3. The chapters on agoraphobia and PTSD are very helpful indeed. Paul Gilbert's chapter on how to help clients develop compassionate mind using compassionate imagery is excellent and inspiring.
In conclusion, if you're looking for one book that will teach you a great deal about using imagery in CBT, and bring you up to date with research and clinical approaches in the area then this is it. Dr Stopa's writing and editorial skills are superb.