With an entertaining and thought-provoking style, ‘Psychology and the Reflective Counsellor’ brings basic, straightforward knowledge from current psychology to counselling.

Refreshingly direct and clear, with bullet points regularly summing up main points to be used as practical aids or spurs to reflection, Cozolino’s words will be reassuring and helpful to therapists at the beginning of their journey, and an enjoyable, sometimes thought-provoking companion to those already practising.

Regarded as the textbook of research on the effectiveness of counselling and psychotherapy, this volume is a favourite of practitioners who approach their work in an empirical spirit. While tracing research developments gradually as individual papers appear remains an important part of being well-informed about the field, the reviews and meta-analyses offered in this massive volume provide a very efficient entree into the research literature and a simple way of understanding the primary themes and tentative conclusions emerging from empirical research across the world.

At a time when Complementary and Alternative Therapies have (again) been under fire from some university scientists for falsely claiming scientific status, and in an era of evidence-based psychotherapy, this book is a key text. It should have a place on all postgraduate counselling and psychotherapy courses, but I suspect it will not be so readily accommodated.