Gillie Bolton

The use of writing in counselling and psychotherapy, as a medium for therapeutic work, has received increasing attention in recent years. The editors of Writing Cures have brought together a wide-ranging collection of chapters that reflect the energy, creativity and diversity if this field at the present time. Their Handbook is comprehensive, in encompassing different therapeutic approaches, including psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, cognitive analytic and narrative therapies, and a rich variety of modes of writing, such as letters, emails, poems and diaries. Critical issues are examined, for instance around the ethical basis of counselling on the internet. This is a book that is consistently stimulating and informative: the reader is able to make connections between ideas and methods introduced in different chapters, and readily able to envisage ways in which the use of writing might be integrated into their own therapeutic practice.

John McLeod
Tayside Institute for Health Studies
University of Abertay Dundee
December 2003