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Contents
Contributors x
Acknowledgments xiv
Preface xv
1 Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies / Frank Dumont 1

Evolution of this Science and Profession 2
Psychotherapy-Related Science in the 19th Century 4
The Impact of the Biological Sciences
on Psychotherapy 6
Cultural Factors and Psychotherapy 9
Negotiating Fault Lines in the EBT Terrain 11
Manualization of Treatment 13
Obstacles to a Science of Psychotherapy 14
Sources of Hope 14
Industrializing Psychotherapy 15
Who Can Do Psychotherapy? 15
Conclusion 16
References 18
2 Psychodynamic Psychotherapies / Jeremy D. Safran, Alexander Kriss,

and Victoria Kaitlin Foley 21
Overview 22
History 27
Personality 34
Psychotherapy 37
Applications 47
Case Example 50
Summary 53
Annotated Bibliography 54
Case Readings 54
References 55
3 Adlerian Psychotherapy / Michael P. Maniacci

and Laurie Sackett-Maniacci 59
Overview 60
History 66
Personality 70
Psychotherapy 74
Applications 82
Case Example 89
Summary 94
Case Readings 96
References 96
| v
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4 Client-Centered Therapy / Nathaniel J. Raskin, Carl R. Rogers, and Marjorie C. Witty 101
Overview 102
History 112
Personality 116
Psychotherapy 122
Applications 129
Case Example 142
Summary 149
Case Readings 150
References 151
5 Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy / Albert Ellis and Debbie Joffe Ellis 157
Overview 158
History 164
Personality 167
Psychotherapy 173
Applications 183
Case Example 192
Summary 194
Case Readings 196
References 196
6 Behavior Therapy / Martin M. Antony 199

Overview 200
History 202
Personality 206
Psychotherapy 209
Applications 212
Case Example 227
Summary 230
Conclusion 232
Case Readings 233
References 233
7 Cognitive Therapy / Aaron T. Beck and Marjorie E. Weishaar 237

Overview 238
History 242
Personality 245
Psychotherapy 252
Applications 257
Case Example 264
Summary 268
vi | Contents
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Case Readings 269

References 270
8 Existential Psychotherapy / Irvin D. Yalom and Ruthellen Josselson 273

Overview 274
History 278
Personality 281
Psychotherapy 286
Applications 298
Case Example 302
Summary 305
Case Readings 306
References 306
9 Gestalt Therapy / Gary Yontef, Lynne Jacobs and Charles Bowman 309
Overview 310
History 315
Personality 319
Psychotherapy 326
Applications 335
Case Example 342
Summary 344
Case Readings 346
References 346
10 Interpersonal Psychotherapy / Helen Verdeli and Myrna M. Weissman 349

Overview 350
History 354
Personality 359
Psychotherapy 361
Applications 371
Case Example 382
Summary 384
Case Readings 386
References 386
11 Family Therapy / Irene Goldenberg and Mark Stanton 391

Overview 392
History 398
Personality 404
Psychotherapy 407
Applications 415
Contents | vii
Case Example 421
Summary 423
Case Readings 424
References 425
12 Mindfulness and Other Contemplative Therapies / Roger Walsh and Frances

Vaughan 429
Overview 430
History 436
Personality 440
Psychotherapy 448
Applications 456
Case Example 473
Summary 474
Web Sites and Other Resources 477
Books for Learning to Meditate 477
Case Readings 477
References 477
13 Positive Psychotherapy / Tayyab Rashid and Martin Seligman 481

Overview 482
History 485
Personality 487
Psychotherapy 489
Applications 510
Case Example 517
Summary 519
Annotated Bibliography and Web Resources 520
Additional Clinical Books 521
Nonclinical Books with Practical Resources 521
Case Readings 521
References 522
14 Integrative Psychotherapies / John C. Norcross and Larry E. Beutler 527

Overview 528
History 532
Personality 536
Psychotherapy 537
Applications 545
Case Example 550
Summary 556
viii | Contents
Annotated Bibliography and Web Resources 556
Case Readings and Videotapes 557
References 558
15 Multicultural Theories of Psychotherapy / Lillian Comas-Díaz 561

Overview 562
History 570
Personality 575
Psychotherapy 577
Applications 584
Case Example 589
Summary 592
Case Readings 593
References 594
16 Contemporary Challenges and Controversies / Kenneth S. Pope

and Danny Wedding 599
The Mental-Health Workforce 600
Physicians, Medications, and Psychotherapy 602
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM -5), The International Classification
of Diseases (ICD -11), and Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) 604
Empirically Supported Therapies 605
Phones, Computers, and the Internet 608
Therapists’ Sexual Involvement With Patients, Nonsexual Physical Touch, and
Sexual Feelings 612
Nonsexual Multiple Relationships and Boundary Issues 615
Accessibility and People with Disabilities 617
The American Psychological Association, the Law, and Individual
Ethical Responsibility 619
Detainee Interrogations 619
The Goldwater Rule 621
Cultures 622
References 626
Glossary 629
Name Index 639
Subject Index 647
Contents | ix
Contributors
Martin M. Antony Therapy. He teaches Gestalt therapy nationally

Martin M. Antony, PhD, is Professor of and internationally and has numerous related
Psychology at Ryerson University, Toronto, publications. He is a Gestalt trainer, psychotherapist
Canada, where he conducts research on the and business consultant in Indianapolis, Indiana.
nature and treatment of anxiety disorders
Lillian Comas-Díaz
and perfectionism. The author of more than
Lillian Comas-Díaz, PhD, is a clinical psychologist
250 scholarly publications, Dr. Antony has
in full-time private practice and a Clinical Professor
coauthored or edited 30 books, including Behavior
at the George Washington University Department
Therapy and the Oxford Handbook of Anxiety and
of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Lillian has
Related Disorders. Dr. Antony has received many
published extensively in psychology and serves
career awards for his contributions to research and
on several editorial boards. She is the author of
training, and he also has served as president of the
Multicultural Care: A Clinician’s Guide to Cultural
Canadian Psychological Association.
Competence. Her most recent book is Womanist
Aaron T. Beck and Mujerista Psychologies: Voices of Fire, Acts of
Aaron T. Beck, MD, founded Cognitive Therapy. He Courage (coedited with T. Bryant Davis).
currently directs the Psychopathology Research Unit Frank Dumont
in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Frank Dumont, EdD, Professor Emeritus, McGill
Pennsylvania, where he is an emeritus professor. Dr. University, Montreal, Canada, was Director of
Beck is the recipient of numerous awards, including the PhD program in counseling psychology at
the 2006 Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research McGill, where he served as department chair.
Award for developing Cognitive Therapy. He published widely on inferential processes in
Larry E. Beutler psychotherapy, collaborated with Raymond Corsini
Larry E. Beutler, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at on The Dictionary of Psychology, and most recently
the University of California–Santa Barbara and the authored A History of Personality Psychology.
William McInnes Distinguished Professor Emeritus Albert Ellis (1913–2007)
at Palo Alto University. He is past editor of the Albert Ellis, PhD, wrote more than 80 books and
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and the more than 800 articles, but he is best known for
Journal of Clinical Psychology. He is past president developing and championing Rational Emotive
of two APA divisions (the Society of Clinical Behavior Therapy (REBT). He was consistently
Psychology and the Society for Advancement of ranked as one of the most influential psychologists
Psychotherapy) and author or coauthor of 29 books of the 20th century. In addition to his writing, Al
and more than 500 scholarly papers and chapters on trained and supervised practitioners, and he helped
psychotherapy and assessment. He is the developer thousands of clients in his clinical practice. Dr. Ellis
of Systematic Treatment Selection (STS) and the was posthumously awarded the 2013 Award for
associated website (www.innerlife.com). STS is Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology
an evidence-based integrative psychotherapy that by the American Psychological Association.
identifies principles of therapeutic change that are
associated with effectiveness. Debbie Joffe Ellis
Debbie Joffe Ellis, MDAM, is a licensed psychologist
Charles Bowman and mental health counselor, author, and presenter
Charles Bowman is Co-President of the who conducted public and professional workshops
Indianapolis Gestalt Institute and a past president with her husband, Albert Ellis, until his death in
of the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt 2007. Debbie currently maintains a clinical practice
x |
and travels around the world presenting on Rational New School for Social Research in New York City
Emotive Behavior Therapy. and completed internship training at Columbia
Victoria Kaitlin Foley University Medical Center in 2014. Dr. Kriss
Victoria Kaitlin Foley is a doctoral student and Prize currently works in private practice in New York
Fellow in clinical psychology at The New School City and is a clinical supervisor at the City College
for Social Research in New York, New York. She of New York and The New School.
received her MA in Psychology from The New Michael P. Maniacci
School in 2017 and her BA in English and Political Michael P. Maniacci, PsyD, is a licensed
Science from Vanderbilt University in 2011. clinical psychologist in private practice in
Irene Goldenberg Chicago and Naperville, Illinois. He teaches
Irene Goldenberg, EdD, is a Professor Emerita in the at numerous institutions and consults with
Department of Psychiatry, University of California several organizations. He has written more
at Los Angeles. She has trained generations of than 50 articles or book chapters and authored,
psychiatrists and psychologists in family therapy, coauthored, or edited five textbooks.
and she coauthored Family Therapy: An Overview, John C. Norcross
now in its eighth edition. Currently, Irene is in John C. Norcross, PhD, ABPP, is Distinguished
independent practice in Los Angeles, California. Professor and former Chair of Psychology at the
Lynne Jacobs University of Scranton, Adjunct Professor of
Lynne Jacobs, PhD, cofounded the Pacific Gestalt Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University,
Institute in Los Angeles, where she continues to and a clinical psychologist in part-time practice.
practice. She is also a training and supervising Author of more than 400 publications, Dr. Norcross
analyst at the Institute of Contemporary has cowritten or edited 25 books, including
Psychoanalysis, and she maintains a private practice Psychotherapy Relationships That Work, Handbook
in Los Angeles. Lynne has numerous publications of Psychotherapy Integration, Insider’s Guide to
and teaches Gestalt therapists internationally. Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling
Psychology, and the five-volume APA Handbook
Ruthellen Josselson
of Clinical Psychology. John also has served as
Ruthellen Josselson, PhD, is a professor of clinical
president of the APA Society of Clinical Psychology,
psychology at the Fielding Graduate University
APA Division of Psychotherapy, and the Society for
in Santa Barbara, California, and a practicing
the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration.
psychotherapist. She is author of many books and
articles, including Playing Pygmalion: How People Kenneth S. Pope
Create One Another, The Space Between Us: Kenneth S. Pope, PhD, is a licensed psychologist
Exploring the Dimensions of Human Relationships, and diplomate in clinical psychology whose works
and, most recently, Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s include more than 100 articles and chapters.
Search for Meaning and Identity. She is codirector The most recent of Ken’s 12 books are Ethics in
of the Yalom Institute of Psychotherapy, and she Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Practical Guide
has received both the Henry A. Murray Award (6th ed.) (coauthored with Melba J. T. Vasquez)
and the Theodore R. Sarbin Award from the and Five Steps to Strengthen Ethics in Organizations
American Psychological Association. and Individuals: Effective Strategies Informed by
Alexander Kriss Research and History. A Fellow of the Association
Alexander Kriss, PhD, is a clinical psychologist for Psychological Science (APS), Ken provides free
and writer. He received his doctorate from The psychology and disability resources at kpope.com.
Contributors | xi
Tayyab Rashid Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis,
Dr. Tayyab Rashid, (www.tayyabrashid.com), is a and past president of the International Association
licensed clinical psychologist and associate for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.
faculty at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of numerous books, including
Dr. Rashid‘s expertise includes positive psychology Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Therapies.
based clinical interventions, postdramatic growth, Martin E. P. Seligman
resilience, and self-development of emerging Martin Seligman, PhD, is the Zellerbach Family
adults. He is the current president of Clinical Professor of Psychology and Director of the Positive
Division of the International Positive Psychology Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Association (IPPA) and recipient of IPPA’s Seligman cofounded the field of positive psychology
Outstanding Practitioner Award for 2017. in 1998 and has since devoted his career to
Nathaniel J. Raskin (1921–2010) furthering the study of positive emotion, positive
Nathaniel J. Raskin, PhD, has been called a “quiet character traits, and positive institutions. Seligman’s
giant” of the client-centered approach. He was a earlier work focused on learned helplessness and
student of Carl Rogers, later a colleague and close depression. Seligman is an often-cited authority in
friend, and a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Positive Psychology and a best-selling author.
Northwestern University Medical School. Everyone Mark Stanton
who experienced Nat in small groups, in classes, Mark Stanton, PhD, ABPP, is the provost and a
or as clients, recalls his decency, generosity, and professor of Graduate Psychology at Azusa Pacific
profound embodiment of unconditional positive University. He was the inaugural editor of Couple
regard, empathic understanding, and genuineness. and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, the
2011–2012 president of the American Board of
Carl Rogers (1902–1987)
Couple and Family Psychology, the 2005 president
Carl Ransom Rogers, PhD, pioneer of the
of the APA Society for Family Psychology, and
client-centered and person-centered approach,
coauthor of the ninth edition of Family Therapy:
is regarded as one of the most influential and
An Overview. He maintains a private practice
revolutionary psychologists of the 20th century.
focused on couples therapy.
He was a master therapist whose emancipatory
theory and practice, not only of therapy but also Frances Vaughan (1935–2017)
of interpersonal relationships, are widely studied. Frances Vaughan, Ph.D., was formerly president
His later work included large group encounters of both the Association of Transpersonal
between parties to international conflicts in Psychology and the Association of Humanistic
Northern Ireland and Central America. Psychology, as well as on the clinical faculty
of the University of California. Her many
Laurie Sackett-Maniacci publications included the books Awakening
Laurie Sackett-Maniacci, PsyD, is a licensed clinical Intuition, The Inward Arc: Healing in
psychologist and an adjunct faculty member at Psychotherapy and Spirituality, and Shadows of
Roosevelt University in Schaumburg, Illinois. She the Sacred: Seeing through Spiritual Illusions.
maintains a private practice in Naperville, Illinois, With her husband Roger Walsh, she also coedited
and she is a student and instructor of yoga. Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision. She
Jeremy D. Safran was awarded two honorary doctorates.
Jeremy D. Safran, PhD, is Professor of Psychology Helen Verdeli
at The New School for Social Research, Clinical Helen Verdeli, PhD, is an Associate Professor of
Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia
xii | Contributors
University. Her teaching and research focus on Physicians and Surgeons and the Mailman School
treatment and prevention of mood disorders with of Public Health, Columbia University. She is also
an emphasis on underresourced regions around Chief of Epidemiology at the New York State
the world. She serves on advisory committees for Psychiatric Institute. Myrna has won numerous
the World Health Organization, United Nations awards for her research on depression, and she has
nongovernmental organizations, and many other been elected to the National Academy of Medicine
international organizations. of the National Academy of Science.
Roger Walsh Marjorie C. Witty
Roger Walsh, MD, PhD, DHL, is professor of Marjorie C. Witty, PhD, is Professor and University
psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology and a Fellow at the Illinois School of Professional
professor in the religious studies program at the Psychology, Argosy University, Chicago. She has
University of California at Irvine. He is a long-term taught and practiced client-centered therapy since
student, teacher, and researcher of contemplative 1974. She has published articles on the subject
practices. His relevant publications include of social influence and nondirectiveness in client-
Paths Beyond Ego, The World of Shamanism, and centered therapy and served on the editorial boards
Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices. of The Person-Centered Journal and the Person-
He has also produced an American Psychological Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies journal.
Association psychotherapy video, Positive and
Transpersonal Approaches to Therapy. Irvin Yalom
Irvin Yalom, MD, is Emeritus Professor of
Danny Wedding Psychiatry at Stanford University and currently in
Danny Wedding, PhD, MPH, taught at numerous private practice in Palo Alto and San Francisco.
universities, including the University of Missouri, He has published widely, including textbooks
Alliant International University, Yonsei University (The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
(South Korea), Chiang Mai University (Thailand), and Existential Psychotherapy), guides for
and the American University of Antigua. Danny has therapists (The Gift of Therapy and Staring at
published widely, and he edited PsycCRITIQUES, the Sun) and collections of psychotherapy tales
the American Psychological Association’s journal of (Love’s Executioner and Momma and the Meaning
book and film reviews, for 14 years. He is currently of Life) as well as several psychotherapy teaching
a Distinguished Consulting Faculty Member at novels (When Nietzsche Wept, Lying on the
Saybrook University in Oakland, California, and he Couch, The Schopenhauer Cure, and The Spinoza
edits the Hogrefe/Society of Clinical Psychology series Problem) and his 2017 memoir, Becoming Myself.
Advances in Psychotherapy: Evidence Based Practice.
Gary Yontef
Marjorie E. Weishaar
Gary Yontef, PhD, ABPP, is a cofounder of the
Marjorie E. Weishaar, PhD, is a Clinical Professor
Pacific Gestalt Institute, past president of the
of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Alpert
Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles, and an
Medical School of Brown University. She teaches
Associate Editor of Gestalt Review. He formerly
cognitive therapy to psychology and psychiatry
taught at UCLA but is now in private practice
residents. She has widely published in cognitive
in Los Angeles. Gary teaches and consults
therapy and has received several teaching awards.
internationally, and his publications about the
Myrna M. Weissman theory and practice of relational gestalt therapy
Myrna M. Weissman, PhD, is a Professor of include the book Awareness, Dialogue, and Process:
Epidemiology and Psychiatry at the College of Essays on Gestalt Therapy.
Contributors | xiii
Acknowledgments
Every new edition of a book is shaped and improved by the comments of those read-
ers who take time to provide feedback about previous editions. This book is no dif-
ferent, and I have benefited from the suggestions of literally hundreds of my students,
colleagues, and friends. I have been particularly vigilant about getting feedback from
those professors who use Current Psychotherapies as a text, and their comments help
shape each new edition. I also benefited from numerous suggestions from colleagues in
the Society of Clinical Psychology (Division 12 of the American Psychological Associa-
tion) during my presidential year and every year since. Barbara Cubic and Frank Dumont
helped with this new edition and made numerous important suggestions, and I’m grate-
ful for the common sense and good advice of Alexander Hancock, a Cengage content
developer, and Julie Martinez, my Cengage product manager.
xiv |
Preface
This new edition of Current Psychotherapies reflects a commitment to maintaining

the currency alluded to in the book’s title, and the text in its entirety provides a
comprehensive overview of the state of the art of psychotherapy in 2018. More than a
million students have used previous editions of this book, and Current Psychotherapies
has been translated into more than a dozen languages. One reviewer referred to the text
as “venerable.” I am proud of its success.
Ray Corsini originally persuaded me to work with him in 1976 while I was a grad-
uate student at the University of Hawaii, and recruiting the best possible authors and
maintaining the quality of Current Psychotherapies has been a consuming passion for the
past four decades. I’m convinced each new edition is better than the last.
A new author has been added for the chapter on Psychodynamic Psychotherapies,
and she has updated the chapter and added numerous descriptions of cutting-edge psy-
chodynamic research (e.g., a 2017 study documenting the equivalent effectiveness of
psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral treatments). Michael P. Maniacci and Laurie
Sackett-Maniacci, an Adlerian husband and wife team, have updated their chapter to
describe the seminal contributions Jon Carlson made before passing away while their
chapter was being written.
Marge Witty has made extensive updates to her chapter on Client Centered Psycho-
therapy, including a discussion of the paternalism inherent in cognitive behavior therapy
based on Proctor’s (2017) analysis and Ryan and Deci’s (2017) formulation of self-
determination theory. Debbie Joffe Ellis, widow of Albert Ellis, has updated the chapter
on REBT, expanded her discussion of the importance of gratitude, and included infor-
mation on accessing the REBT videotapes she developed for the American Psychologi-
cal Association.
My friend Martin Antony (Marty) is a consummate scholar, and his chapter in-
cludes numerous updates to recent findings in the behavior therapy literature, including
evidence documenting the importance of the relationship in cognitive behavior ther-
apy (Kazantzis, Dttilio, & Dobson, 2017). Marty also notes that the Society of Clini-
cal Psychology’s 2017 list of empirically supported psychological treatments “includes
80 treatments for particular disorders of which more than three quarters are behavioral
or cognitive-behavioral treatments.”
The chapter on Cognitive Therapy now includes a discussion of the relevance of
mindfulness training to the treatment of anxiety and depression in cognitive therapy.
Marjorie Weishaar and Aaron (Tim) Beck also allude to recent meta-analyses support-
ing the efficacy of cognitive behavior therapy. Getting to know and work with Marjorie
and Tim has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my work as editor of Current
Psychotherapies.
Ruthellen Josselson and Irvin Yalom have updated their chapter to include a discus-
sion of the move toward psychotherapy integration, and they introduce readers to two
important new books in existential psychotherapy: Jerry Shapiro’s Pragmatic Existential
Counseling and Psychotherapy: Intimacy, Intuition, and the Search for Meaning (2016)
and Orah Krug and Kirk Schneider’s Supervision Essentials for Existential-Humanistic
Therapy (2016).
| xv
A new author, Charles Bowman, has been added to the chapter on Gestalt Therapy.
Dr. Bowman has made extensive changes to the previous chapter, making it current and
contemporary. I appreciate his erudite scholarship, especially his thoughtful explanation
of the limits of evidence in the Gestalt tradition. He notes “randomized controlled trials,
which are considered ‘strong evidence’ by researchers, decontextualize the patient, and
bear no resemblance to the clinical situation.”
Helen Verdeli and Myrna Weissman have updated their chapter on Interpersonal
Psychotherapy (IPT) to include a discussion of recent meta-analyses like that of Palpac-
uer and colleagues (2017), who “found IPT to be the most robust of psychotherapeutic
interventions, having the highest increase in response compared to the wait-list condi-
tion.” They also introduce readers to an important new book, Interpersonal Psychother-
apy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Markowitz, 2017).
The chapter on Family Therapy has a new coauthor, Mark Stanton, Provost at
Azusa Pacific University. Mark coauthored the ninth edition of the Goldenberg’s classic
text on Family Therapy, and he updated the Current Psychotherapies chapter on Family
Therapy to include multiple studies from 2016 and 2017, including a discussion of how
family therapists relate to the “unique problems inherent in the multitude of families
today that do not fit the historical model of the intact family.”
I am especially grateful to my good friend Roger Walsh, a visionary polymath, who
retitled and reworked his chapter on contemplative psychotherapies to focus on mind-
fulness and its relevance to all forms of psychotherapy. His new chapter, now titled
“Mindfulness and Other Contemplative Psychotherapies,” is a masterful review of a vast
and ever-growing literature. I found his new discussion of “The Shadow Side of Suc-
cess,” pointing out the problems associated with an unduly enthusiastic rush to embrace
mindfulness in psychotherapy, especially compelling. I’m confident there is no one in
the world better qualified than Roger to write this chapter.
Positive psychology is one of the newest and most exciting developments in contem-
porary psychotherapy, and two bona fide experts—Tayyab Rashid and Martin Seligman—
have updated their chapter on Positive Psychotherapy (PPT) for this new edition of
Current Psychotherapies. Their “Summary of PPT Outcome Studies” is a masterful over-
view of recent research, including seven studies published since 2016.
Working closely with one’s friends is one of the joys of editing a book like this, and
I consider John Norcross and Larry Beutler two of my finest friends. Both are prolific
authors, both are incredibly smart, and both write beautifully. At different times, all
three of us have served as President of the Society of Clinical Psychology, and I appreci-
ate their consummate scholarship and the care they took to update their chapter.
Lillian Comas-Díaz is another cherished friend, and one of the women I most ad-
mire. Lillian is bilingual and bicultural, and she knows more about multicultural psy-
chotherapy than anyone else I know. Her updated chapter addresses the importance of
humility in culturally relevant psychotherapy. In her characteristic way, the first draft of
her revised chapter failed to mention her newest book, Womanist and Mujerista Psychol-
ogies: Voices of Fire, Acts of Courage, co-edited with Thema Bryant-Davis (2016). It is an
important book, and I insisted it be included.
xvi | Preface
Finally, it was once again a pleasure to work with Ken Pope in an effort to “wrap
things up.” We discuss a discouraging report on The State of Mental Health in Amer-
ica 2017 (Nguyen & Davis, 2017), provide updated numbers for the number of mental
health professionals working in a variety of different disciplines, and discuss the slowly
growing number of states that now allow psychologists with appropriate training to pre-
scribe psychotropic medications. In addition, there is a new discussion of the “Goldwa-
ter rule,” which prohibits many mental health professionals from diagnosing individuals
they have never formally assessed. This vexing issue seems especially relevant after the
2016 presidential election.
In a preface to an earlier edition, Raymond J. Corsini described six features of Cur-
rent Psychotherapies that have helped ensure the book’s utility and popularity. These
core principles have guided the development of each subsequent edition.
1. The chapters in this book describe the most important systems in the current prac-
tice of psychotherapy. Because psychotherapy is constantly evolving, deciding
what to put into new editions and what to take out demands a great deal of
research. The opinions of professors were central in shaping the changes we
have made.
2. The most competent available authors were recruited. Newly established systems
are described by their founders; older systems are covered by those best qualified
to describe them.
3. This book is highly disciplined. Each author follows an outline in which the var-
ious sections are limited in length and structure. The purpose of this feature
is to make it as convenient as possible to compare the systems by reading the
book “horizontally” (from section to section across the various systems) as well
as in the usual “vertical” manner (chapter to chapter). The major sections of
each chapter include an overview of the system being described, its history, a
discussion of the theory of personality that shaped the therapy, a detailed dis-
cussion of how psychotherapy using the system is actually practiced, and an
explanation of the various applications of the approach being described. In
addition, each therapy described is accompanied by a case study illustrating
the techniques and methods associated with the approach. Students interested
in more detailed case examples can read this book’s companion volume, Case
Studies in Psychotherapy (Wedding & Corsini, 2014); the case studies book
presents a exemplar case to accompany each of the core therapy chapters in
Current Psychotherapies. Those students who want to understand psychother-
apy in depth will benefit from reading both Current Psychotherapies and Case
Studies in Psychotherapy.
4. Current Psychotherapies is carefully edited. Every section is examined to make
certain that its contents are appropriate and clear. In the long history of this
text, only one chapter was ever accepted in its first draft. Some chapters have
been returned to their original authors as many as four times before finally being
accepted.
Preface | xvii
5. Chapters are as concise as they can possibly be and still cover the systems com-
pletely. We have received consistent feedback that the chapters in Current Psy-
chotherapies need to be clear, succinct, and direct. We have taken this feedback
seriously, and every sentence in each new edition is carefully edited to ensure
that the information provided is not redundant or superfluous.
6. The glossary for each new edition is updated and expanded. One way for stu-
dents to begin any chapter would be to read the relevant entries in the glossary,
thereby generating a mind-set that will facilitate understanding the various sys-
tems. Personality theorists tend to invent new words when no existing word
suffices. This clarifies their ideas, but it also makes understanding their chapter
more difficult. A careful study of the glossary will reward the reader.
Ray Corsini died on November 8, 2008. He was a master Adlerian therapist, the
best of my teachers, and a cherished friend. I will always be grateful for his friendship,
his support of my career, and everything I learned from him during the many years we
worked together.
Danny Wedding
Berkeley, California
xviii | Preface
1
Introduction to 21st-Century
Psychotherapies
Frank Dumont
Learning Objectives
1 Learn how psychotherapies evolved since Leibniz into the science and
professions of the 21st century: studies of the subliminal mind,
lab-based organic research, psychologist clinicians, the clash of
organic and school-based approaches, and rise of the empiricists.
2 Examine the impact of emergent biological sciences on mentalistic

approaches to mental health.
3 Learn how controlling environmental events can therapeutically

alter our genome and explore the impact of neuroscience on
In the sum of the parts there are psychotherapy in the future.
only the parts (Wallace Stevens, 4 Appreciate changing views of globalization, indigenizing psychology,
2011). But in the product of the and cross-cultural counseling.
parts we can identify the person.
5 Explore the fault lines in empirically based therapy: art vis-à-vis
Courtesy of Frank Dumont science.
6 Examine manualization of psychotherapy and its limitations.

Other men are lenses through
which we read our own minds. 7 Explore how integrationist and cross-disciplinary impulses will
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850) influence your future practice.
8 Examine who can do therapy and what constraints, personal and
Psychotherapy, as far as it institutional, are imposed.
leads to substantial behavior
change, appears to achieve its
effect through changes in gene
expression at the neuronal level.
Eric Kandel (1996)
| 1
Evolution of this Science and Profession LO1
This new edition of Current Psychotherapies surveys a diverse set of empirically based
psychotherapies that have been thoroughly updated. Each presents a vision of the hu-
man as well as a set of distinct treatment procedures for addressing the emotional dis-
tress and accompanying behavioral and cognitive problems that drive people to seek
help. As one reviews the evolution of this book through its 11 editions and the theo-
ries of personality development that underpin each therapy treated within it, it’s evident
that theories have an increasingly short half-life. Entire schools of psychotherapy have
undergone dramatic change, some more rapidly than others—and some have virtually
disappeared (e.g., transactional analysis). New and increasingly integrative approaches
to mental health have been presented. Although built on strong historical foundations,
these recent modalities would strike even psychotherapists of the 1960s and 1970s as
novel if not strange.
The structures of all the therapies presented here, and their interdisciplinary and
clinical effectiveness, have continued to improve since the preceding edition. Yet in this
context, we regret that some widely practiced and reputed therapies such as Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which we urge readers to study (e.g., Hayes, Stro-
sahl, & Wilson, 2011) and Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) developed in part by
Marsha M. Linehan (e.g., Dimeff & Linehan, 2001) were omitted for reasons of space
limitation and availability. Chapter 2, “Psychodynamic Psychotherapies,” presents the
evolved 21st century configurations of Freudian and Jungian schemas, which continue to
serve as a prolific matrix for Kleinian and other analytic therapies springing from those
origins. All the other chapters have been similarly updated. We regret that still other
effective psychotherapies have not been added that would merit inclusion were it not for
space limitations.
Historical Foundations of Psychotherapy

To understand where our profession is heading, we need to know where psychotherapy
historically started in the West and how it has been transformed by the ongoing global
integration of scientific and cultural perspectives on behavior and cognition. This his-
tory is briefly addressed in this section.
From the origins of recorded history, humans have sought means to remedy the
mental disorders that have afflicted them. Some of these remedies, such as the ceremo-
nial healing rituals found in shamanistic societies, were and continue to be patently un-
scientific—though not necessarily ineffective for that reason. Pre-Christian, temple-like
asklepeia and other retreat centers of the eastern Mediterranean region used religio-
philosophical lectures, meditation, and simple bed rest to compete with secular medi-
cine and assuage if not remedy psychological disorders. Within the secularistic stream
of psycho-physiological treatment in which he worked, Hippocrates presented Western
science with a humor-based four-factor theory of personality (Dumont, 2016). That par-
adigm has been recapitulated and endorsed by Hans Eysenck and other psychologists
over the past century.
By their empirical investigations, Hellenist physicians understood that the brain was
not only the seat of knowledge and learning but also the source of depression, delirium,
and madness. Indeed, Hippocrates wrote, “Men ought to know that from nothing else
but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency,
and lamentations . . . and by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears
and terrors assail us . . . all things we endure from the brain when it is not healthy”
2 | Chapter 1
(5th century BCE, quoted by Stanley Finger, 2001, p. 13). Hippocrates himself insisted
that his students address illnesses by natural means. He repudiated the popular notion
that conditions such as seizures were “divine” and should be treated by supplicating or
appeasing a deity. Although the Hippocratic tradition endured without interruption to
the time of his renowned disciple Galen, who lived six centuries later, psychotherapy as
a domain of science in its modern sense did not clearly emerge until the 18th century.
The Unconscious
A Primordial Construct
The reader will find that the construct unconscious plays a salient role in certain chap-
ters of this volume. Although it was examined and debated by Hellenists thousands of
years ago, the unconscious was also a key construct in the psychotherapies that emerged
in the West in the 19th century. The scientific study of the unconscious is commonly
thought to have started with renowned polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–
1716). Leibniz studied the role of subliminal perceptions in our daily life (and coined
the term dynamic to describe the forces that operate in unconscious mentation). His
investigations of the unconscious were continued by Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–
1841). Herbart attempted to mathematicize the passage of memories to and from the
conscious and the unconscious. He suggested that tacit ideas struggle with one another
for access to consciousness as dissonant ideas repel and depress one another. Associ-
ated ideas help draw each other into consciousness (or drag each other into uncon-
scious realms). Leibniz and Herbart are salient examples of 17th- and 18th-century
scientists who attributed significance to an understanding of the unconscious in their
work (Whyte, 1960).
Evidence accumulates that the mind never sleeps, operates continuously at various
subliminal levels, and constantly pursues solutions to self-perceived problems and needs.
Vivid examples of this include great discoveries made when one is not actually thinking
of a problem that requires solution. For example, Henri Poincaré, a great 20th-century
mathematician, famously was boarding a tram en route to a vacation site when the solu-
tion to a math problem that had eluded him (and the world) appeared spontaneously
in his (well-prepared) mind. Quite recently, Thomas Royen, a retired German statisti-
cian in the pharmaceutical industry, was brushing his teeth when a similar revelation
occurred. The remarkable but simple solution to the Gaussian correlation inequality
thesis presented itself unannounced. (Students can download proofs at T. Royen, 2014,
and access other key references at the Wikipedia Web site.) Such activities also occur in
the more mundane domains of our personal lives.
Mesmer and Schopenhauer

Two of the most influential and creative thinkers in the early 19th century were Franz
Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Their impact can
be seen in the psychiatric literature that evolved into the full-fledged systems of Pierre
Janet, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Gustav Jung. Nobel laureate Thomas
Mann observed that, in reading Freud, he had an eerie feeling that he was actually read-
ing Schopenhauer translated into a later idiom (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 209). Analogous
statements could be made about many of the other system builders.
Regarded as the pioneers of hypnotherapy, Mesmer and his disciples effectively dis-
credited the exorcist tradition that had dominated pre-Enlightenment Europe (Leahey,
2000, pp. 216–218). That there are many quaint and unsubstantiated hypotheses in the
Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 3
Mesmerian system does not diminish the fact that we can trace to Mesmer the principle
that rapport between therapist and patient is important in therapy. He also stressed the
influence of the unconscious in shaping behavior, and he clearly demonstrated the influ-
ence of the personal qualities of the therapist; the spontaneous remission of disorders;
hypnotic somnambulism; the selective, inferential function of memories of which we
have no conscious awareness (reaffirmed later by Helmholtz in 1861); the importance of
patients’ confidence in treatment procedures; and other common factors in our current
therapeutics armory.
Three distinct streams of investigation into how the mind works emerged in the
19th century. The contributors to these streams were (1) systematic, lab-bench empir-
icists; (2) philosophers of nature; and (3) clinician researchers. A multitude of psycho-
therapies were spun off from these investigations.
Psychotherapy-Related Science in the 19th Century

The Natural Science Empiricists
Some of the greatest scientists of the 19th century such as Gustav T. Fechner (1801–1887)
and Herman von Helmholtz (1821–1894) conducted seminal research in the area
of cognitive science. Fechner’s work tapped into and overlapped the investigations of
Herbart. Fechner began with the distinction between the theaters of the waking and
sleeping states—and especially the dream state. That the unconscious exists as a realm
of the mind was evident even to the untutored farm laborer. Anyone who had ever strug-
gled to recall a memory—and succeeded—knew that he or she retained knowledge that
was not always readily accessible. This knowledge had to reside somewhere. In his psy-
chophysics experiments in the late 1850s, Fechner attempted to measure the intensity of
psychic stimulation needed for ideas to cross the threshold from the unconscious to full
awareness—what is referred to today as working memory—as well as the intensity of the
resultant perception. Fechner’s studies reverberated throughout Europe, and the reader
may unknowingly resonate to his findings not only in Freud’s writings and the chapters
of this book but also in those of myriad other contemporary theorists and practitioners,
most notably the Gestaltists and (Milton H.) Ericksonians.
In 1861 Helmholtz, another experimentalist, “discovered the phenomenon of ‘un-
conscious inference,’” which he perceived “as a kind of instantaneous and unconscious
reconstruction of what our past taught us about the object” (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 313).
This idea has been given modern trappings in Thinking, Fast and Slow, a popular and
influential book by Daniel Kahneman (2011). Wilhelm Griesinger, Joannes von Müller,
and many other such experimentalists and brain scientists dominated the academic
scene of Vienna, Berlin, Heidelberg, Tübingen, Leipzig, and other German-language
universities and institutes in the 19th century, making many contributions that infused
the work of later psychodynamicists.
The spirit and approach of these lab-based scientists resounded throughout
Europe and in large part constituted what became known there as the organicist
tradition—an approach that contrasts with the psychic mentalist tradition. Several of
Freud’s mentors, including Ernst Brücke (1819–1892) and Theodor Meynert (1833–1892),
were organicists. Although the organicists worked feverishly throughout the century to
find solutions to psychiatric disorders, Emil Kraepelin on the cusp of the 20th century
finally conceded defeat, admitting that 50 years of hard bench work had given med-
icine few tools for understanding or curing psychiatric disorders (Shorter, 1997,
pp. 103, 328).
4 | Chapter 1
Kraepelin turned his attention to classifying diseases, meticulously describing them,
schematizing their course, and establishing benchmarks for ongoing prognoses—thus
generating as a by-product a paradigm for the contemporary Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual (DSM). Kraepelin’s views provided an opportunity for those so inclined to ar-
gue that only a psychological approach to mental illness would prove effective. Thereaf-
ter, the work of all the brass-instrument methodologists and empiricist dream scholars
of the second half of the 19th century paled in significance by comparison with the
influence of the psycho-philosophical clinicians.
The Psychologist Philosophers

The philosophers of nature had a much greater long-term influence on the development
of the psychotherapies described in the following chapters of this book than did laboratory-
based scientists. These philosophers can be historically situated in the same school of
thought that nurtured Schiller and Goethe. They were Romantics in the philosophical
sense, firmly rooted in nature, beauty, homeland, sentiment, the life of the mind, and,
of course, the mind at its most enigmatic: the unconscious. Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl
Gustav Carus, and Eduard von Hartmann were among the most notable of this group.
Schopenhauer published The World as Will and Representation in 1819. Once it
caught on, this masterpiece of the Western canon provided ideational grist for genera-
tions of psychological researchers. It inspired especially those psychologists who were
imbued with the 19th-century historical school Philosophy of Nature. They had em-
braced (or resigned themselves to) nonbiological methods for curing the fashionable
disorders of the day—even those that today would be classified as major mental dis-
orders. Schopenhauer’s book was in large part a treatise on human sexuality and the
realm of the unconscious. His principal argument was that we know things that we are
unaware that we know, and that we are largely driven by blind, irrational forces. His ir-
rationalist and pansexual view of human behavior and mentation was deterministic and
also pessimistic (see Ellenberger’s 1970 analysis, pp. 208–210). Schopenhauer’s thoughts
influenced the psychology of many later thinkers, not the least of which were Friedrich
Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), a contemporary of Schopenhauer, is largely unread
today. However, he can justifiably be singled out in a book on psychotherapy because
he developed an early and sophisticated schema for the unconscious (see Ellenberger,
1970, pp. 202–210). Carus speculated that there are several levels to the unconscious.
Humans interacting among themselves do so simultaneously at various reaches of their
unconscious and conscious minds. In the clinic, as patient and therapist are at work, the
conscious of each speaks to the other’s unconscious and conscious. Further, the uncon-
scious of each speaks to the conscious as well as the unconscious of the dyadic other.
Both are communicating with each other simultaneously in paravocal, nonverbal, or-
ganic, and affective modes of which both participants are not aware. Thus, both the
therapist and the patient, willfully or not, engage in transference and countertransfer-
ence (see Dumont & Fitzpatrick, 2001). Nonlinear messages systemically and simulta-
neously radiate in all directions. Therapist transference, Carus taught us, occurs at an
unconscious level even as therapist and patient greet each other for the first time. Pillow
talk and huge rallies unconsciously evoke such deep-seated emotional resonances. So
does the clinical psychotherapeutic relationship.
The tracts of Schopenhauer and Carus set the epistemological stage for von Hart-
mann’s and Nietzsche’s influential writings on our tacit cognitions, which they believed
drove the daily, unreflective behavior of people. Nietzsche affirmed that what we are
consciously thinking is “a more or less fantastic commentary on an unconscious, perhaps
unknowable, but felt text” (cited in Ellenberger, 1970, p. 273). Nietzsche developed no-
tions of self-deception, sublimation, repression, conscience, and “neurotic” guilt. In his
view, humans lie to themselves even more than they lie to each other. Cynic par excel-
lence, Nietzsche believed that every complaint is an accusation and every admission of a
behavioral fault or characterological flaw is a subterfuge to conceal serious personal fail-
ures. In brief, he unmasked many of the defense mechanisms that humans employ to em-
bellish their persona and self-image. In his unsystematic and aphoristic way, Nietzsche
cast a long shadow over the personology and psychotherapies of the 20th century.
The Clinician–Researchers
In the nascent clinical psychology of the 19th century, a great number of gifted clinicians
made discoveries and innovations in their clinical practices that had implications for the
development of theories of both personality and psychotherapy. Some were humble prac-
titioners such as celebrated hypnotherapist Ambroise Liébault. Others were great schol-
ars such as Moritz Benedikt (1835–1920), whose work in criminology, psychiatry, and
neurology won the admiration of Jean-Martin Charcot. Benedikt developed the useful
concept of seeking out and clinically purging pathogenic secrets, a practice that Jung later
made an essential element of his analytic psychotherapy. Théodore Flournoy, Josef Breuer,
Auguste Forel, Eugen Bleuler, Paul Dubois (greatly admired by Raymond Corsini),
Sigmund Freud, Pierre Janet, Adolf Meyer, Carl Gustav Jung, and Alfred Adler all made
signal contributions to the science of psychotherapy. Though many of their contributions
have outlived their usefulness, the numerous offshoots of their findings and systems can
be traced within current clinical psychotherapy and in other psychological disciplines.
Evidence of their thinking can be found throughout the various chapters of this book.
Chapters 2 through 15 of this volume represent scientifically recognized advances
over the theories and practices that preceded them. Like all current and major psycho-
therapies, each has emerged to a greater or lesser degree from the historical matrix pre-
viously described. The therapeutic practice of mindfulness, for example, can be traced
to many contemplative lifestyles that have their roots in the ancient traditions of the
Far East and Middle East. Some derive from those of the Near East and the asklepeia
of Hellenic Greece, others more recently publicized in the West such as Japanese shisa
kanko lead us to focus on what one is doing and experiencing in the moment. This
stance toward the world does not favor multitasking.
The Impact of the Biological Sciences

on Psychotherapy LO2
When patients1 learn new ideas—whether true, false, or merely biased, and whether
in the clinic or in the course of daily life—concomitant alterations of the brain occur
(see, e.g., LeDoux’s Synaptic Self, 2002). Every encounter with our environment causes
changes within us and especially in our neural functioning. Once skills and ideas are
truly learned and lodged in permanent storage, it is difficult if not impossible to un-
learn them. Education implies permanence. One who is given the solution to a puzzle
or taught procedural skills such as cracking a safe or riding a bicycle cannot unlearn
1
Throughout this chapter, I have used the term patient, which etymologically implies suffering and character-
izes most people who seek therapy. It is a derivative of a Latin verb that means to endure a painful situation.
In the eighth edition of this book, Raymond Corsini noted the discipline-specific connotations of patient and
client. Ray believed the former term was appropriate for medical contexts, and he used the latter term in his
private practice.
6 | Chapter 1
that knowledge. Neuronal decay and lesions can, of course, undo memory and occur
to a certain extent in normal aging and catastrophically in strokes, illness, or violent
accidents. Needless to say, memories can be silenced, not least by epigenetic markers or
by simple neglect—or rendered easily audible in one’s mind by haunting romantic cues.
The task of the therapist in most cases is to help the patient fashion positive alternative
and “future memories” supported by newly adopted motivational schemas.
Epigenetics: Neuroscience’s Novel Contributions

to Psychotherapy LO3
In his important book Neuropsychotherapy: How the Neurosciences Inform Effective
Psychotherapy (2007), the late Klaus Grawe noted, “Psychotherapy, as far as it leads
to substantial behavior change, appears to achieve its effect through changes in gene
expression at the neuronal level” (p. 3, citing Kandel, 1996). Some neuroscientists ar-
gue that prodding clients to ruminate about their past lives does not erase their painful
memories or their penchant for dwelling on them. Paradoxically, this can embed clients
further in their dysfunctional past by potentiating the neural circuits that are engaged
with and record them. However, some psychodynamic therapists believe exploring the
past can help clients reinterpret traumatic events and come to terms with their haunt-
ing vestiges; such prodding, however, does not teach them more adaptive patterns of
behavior. This controversial issue may partially explain why Adler’s future-oriented ap-
proaches to therapy have gained such a strong (but often unacknowledged) foothold in
contemporary positive psychotherapy compared to past-oriented approaches. Effective
therapists teach patients how to avoid dysfunctional ruminations, harmful behavioral
routines, and maladaptive habits. They also their clients develop social, interpersonal,
self-disciplinary, and technical skills that will advance their well-being and that of others
with whom they interact.
Recent neuroscience has demonstrated that neuronal restructuring, which occurs
in all learning processes, enables the adaptive changes in behavior, affect, and men-
tation that are the core objectives of psychotherapy (see, e.g., Dumont, 2009, 2010a,
2010b). We humans enjoy a certain neural plasticity throughout life but especially in
our prolonged childhood—a developmental phenomenon known as neoteny. (Among
primates, it’s unique to humans.) This provides us the affordances of redemption from
serious environmental and self-inflicted harms.
Much of the plasticity in our neuroemotional systems is achieved through epigene-
tic changes (Mukherjee, 2016, passim). External events (as well as those of the “internal
milieu”) can turn genes on or off by enabling the synthesis of proteins that act, in the
moment, on the genome in cell nuclei. Introducing even minor opportunities and nov-
elties into clients’ lives can have enormous impact on the way they perceive and experi-
ence themselves. We now know that effective therapists and their clients can optimize
desirable outcomes using neural circuit–altering placebo-laden talk and by epigeneti-
cally triggering the expression of dormant genes through exposure to nurturing social
events (see, e.g., Güntürkün, 2006; LeDoux, 2002, pp. 260–300). This ancillary neuro-
logical perspective on psychotherapy allows the creative exploration of cognitive and
emotional variables at play in clients’ lives that are central to their improvement.
Culture generally—and one’s immediate family specifically—function as genetic en-
ablers. As both Merleau-Ponty (Bourgeois, 2003, p. 370) and Antonio Damasio (1994,
pp. 205–212) remind us, culture is sedimented in the body and pervades our central
nervous system. Epigenetic effects can operate for better or for worse, depending on
the extent to which one’s culture is rich and benign—and how much one can access
what it can provide. In brief, it is the complex biocultural matrix of the organic and the
environmental that co-construct our way of being in the world and our potential for
growth (Baltes, Reuter-Lorenz, & Rösler, 2006). As LeDoux (2002) reminds us, “we are
not born preassembled. We are glued together by life.”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016) provides a leading-edge perspective on this interplay
of environmental events and dormant gene expression (pp. 393–410). “Chance events—
injuries, infections, the haunting trill of that particular nocturne, the smell of that partic-
ular madeleine in Paris” all impinge on the genome. “Genes are turned ‘on’ and ‘off’ in
response to these events and epigenetic marks are gradually layered” into the epigenome
(p. 403). Some therapeutic procedures explained in the chapters of this book derive
in part from this complex matrix. What happens to clients as they leave the clinic and
reenter the hurly burly of a challenging environment can have as great an influence on
them as what transpires in session. Therapy needs to focus on programming those af-
ter-session experiences.
Organicists and Dynamicists: Clashing Standpoints

Readers will immediately recognize the potential for cultural confrontations in these
propositions. However, confrontation is neither necessary nor useful. A recent book
integrating evolutionary, neuroscience, and sociocultural approaches to understanding
close relationships among humans (Gillath, Adams, & Kunkel, 2012) presents a good
model for uniting disparate approaches to the study of human nature. The ancient ten-
sions between environmentalists and organicists, psychopharmacologists and psychody-
namicists, behavioral geneticists and cognitive behaviorists can be resolved through a
systemic integration of the many variables that are at play at any moment. Indeed, such
integration is necessary because ignoring organic or environmental variables in the treat-
ment of one’s clients neglects essential aspects of the whole person. That neurosciences
are leading us down a radical reductionist path is a concern that has been carefully ex-
amined; in the light of recent research, it has been somewhat attenuated (e.g., Schwartz,
Lilienfeld, Meca, & Sauvigné, 2016). On the other hand, treating all affective disorders
as if there were no organicity in the causal skein of variables that brought them about is
an ancient error that has been largely dispelled.
One example of this error is ignoring patients’ medication histories. In the final
chapter of this book, Kenneth Pope and Danny Wedding (2019) discuss the danger
inherent in neglecting to monitor patients who are taking psychotropic medication.
Patients need to be pharmacologically guided and their experiences between sessions
closely followed. Medicating patients for psychological purposes requires preset clinical
objectives and conscientious ongoing assessment of progress. Grawe (2007) stated:
From a neuroscientific perspective, psychopharmacological therapy that is not coordinated
with a simultaneous, targeted alteration of the person’s experiences cannot be justified. The
widespread practice of prescribing psychoactive medication without assuming responsibility
for the patient’s concurrent experience is, from a neuroscientific view, equally irresponsible. . . .
The use of pharmacotherapy alone—in the absence of the professional and competent struc-
turing of the treated patient’s life experience—is not justifiable. . . . (pp. 5–6)
Nurture is profoundly shaped by nature. Indeed, as Robert Plomin and Avshalom

Caspi (1999) suggested, we may be genetically driven to seek the very environments
that shape us. Nestler (2011) reminds us, even “[mouse] pups raised by a relaxed and
nurturing mother” are more resistant to stress than pups deprived of such nurturance.
Nurturance melts away inhibitory methyl groups in their genome and “leaves the ani-
mals calmer” (p. 82). He concludes that scientists have learned that “exposure to the en-
vironment and to different experiences . . . throughout development and adulthood can
8 | Chapter 1
modify the activities of our genes and, hence, the ways these traits manifest themselves”
(p. 83). Thus, aspects of our nature get epigenetically expressed and altered for better
or for worse. In other words, genes get chemically tagged by the kinds of experiences
to which we are subjected throughout our lives—and can subsequently be turned on or
off. Like matryoshka dolls, genetic tags may hide inside perceived environmental cues.
Evolutionary Biology and Behavioral Genetics

Neuroscience is not the sole biological research domain whose findings will have impli-
cations for psychotherapy. Evolutionary psychology is closely related to the field of be-
havioral genetics and will further clarify many of the temperamental traits that therapists
need to understand. This discipline will have an impact on the therapeutic modalities
that clinicians of the future will need to develop. Further, it will shine a focused light
on the human genome and the lawfulness that governs its complex transcriptions into
the biopsychosocial regularities that occur in the course of one’s life. Anthropologists
have discovered at least 400 universal behavioral traits that are products of our evolved
monomorphic genes. This is more than we have traditionally imagined (see Brown,
1991) and places some constraints on the cultural relativism that nevertheless justifiably
qualifies all our therapies.
Steven Pinker (2002) has further documented the principle that all humans share a
unique human nature. If we exclude anomalous genetic mutations, the normative stance
of all clinicians treating a patient is that they are dealing with an organism struck from
the same genetic template as themselves. Remaining cognizant of these human regular-
ities, clinicians will still need to uncover those traits influenced by patients’ personal
life events. In that holistic context, therapists can cast light on client strengths, treat
the dysfunctions that patients reveal to them, and monitor the situational variables and
events that can contribute to the remediation of their condition. Those environmental
variables and their influence on thought, speech, and behavior are described in cut-
ting-edge chapters on behavior therapy (Chapter 6, authored by Martin Antony) and
cognitive therapy (Chapter 7, written by Aaron Beck and Marjorie Weishaar), therapies
that are distinct enough to deserve separate chapters but are still tightly intermeshed in
their assessment and treatment procedures.
Finally, the related fields of molecular genetic analysis, cognitive neuropsychology,
and social cognitive neuroscience, which are all advancing at impressive rates, will in-
evitably infiltrate our porous integrationist models of helping. To the extent they can
guide the experiences of their clients, therapists shape to some degree both nurturing
and natural components of their patients’ lives. Environmentalism is assuming renewed
importance as a consequence of advances in the neurosciences. Though these sciences
go beyond the purview of this textbook, they suggest initiatives for our clinical prac-
tice. These bioscience advances will in the next few years significantly reconfigure the
way psychotherapy is done, regardless from which side of the bridgehead the therapist
approaches—the nurturing or nature, the mentalist or somatic.
Cultural Factors and Psychotherapy LO4
Demographics
Multicultural psychotherapy continues to alter the curricula of most clinical and coun-
seling psychology programs. This change reflects the self-evident importance of cultural
factors in psychotherapy; however, it also acknowledged the changing demographic
character of the planet, the human tides that are swirling about the previously distant
continents of the globe, and the tightening communication networks that result when
masses of people engage in commerce, armed conflict, research, diplomacy, higher edu-
cation, or professional psychological counseling. Chapter 15 is dedicated exclusively to
this approach.
Multicultural Psychotherapy
The complexities involved in multicultural counseling are incomparably greater than
those involved in conducting therapy in a homogeneous culture in which each member
of the therapeutic dyad springs from the same ethnocultural background. When the
patient and the therapist are solidly grounded in different traditional cultures, it matters
if the “authority” figure is a member, say, of a minority, nondominant culture or the
dominant, majority culture. In marital counseling, the difficulties multiply like fractals
if the couple seeking help is biracial or bicultural. In this case, the matrix of interactive
variables becomes even more complex should the therapist or counselor unknowingly
identify with one spouse rather than the other—which occurs more often than not.
Gender-by-culture permutations add another layer of systemic interactions. And, of
course, it is not enough to simply acknowledge one’s differentness. Counselors are never
fully aware of how different they are from the clients sitting across from or beside them
for the simple reason that they are never fully aware of the dynamics driving their own
reactions to the client’s socially conditioned sensitivities. Much of therapists’ mentation
operates beyond awareness because their own cognitive and affective structures are in-
termeshed in the invisible, bottomless depths of their unconscious.
Cantonese speakers counseling Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong face different
challenges than Hispanic counselors in San Diego counseling other Hispanics. The phil-
osophical and socioeconomic differences that characterize members of the same society
will determine the suitability of nonindigenous psychotherapies that are more or less
congenial to both of them. But homogeneous non-Caucasian populations confront the
same constellation of contingencies as Euro-American peoples. Job stresses, finances,
physical illness, personal history, family dynamics, personological variables of genetic
and environmental origin, and even the weather and season will affect what happens
between a therapist and a client.
Language and Metaphor

Language, behavioral mannerisms, local and national poetry, myth, and metaphor
are among the instruments that shape the structures of our mind (see, e.g., Lakoff &
Johnson, 1980). Popular metaphors permeate all aspects of human thought. They ulti-
mately shape a nation’s culture and collective “personality.” Those who are not familiar
with these elements of their clients’ culture will find it difficult to enter the labyrinthine
recesses where their ancestral and self-made demons reside, some of them benevolent,
some hurtful.
All therapists can tell clinical stories of mistakes they have made by the innocent use
of a metaphor, a careless juxtaposing of questions, a refusal of a courtesy, or an insensi-
tivity to a taboo of their client’s culture. Painfully, their former patients and friends have
left, often never to return, and with hardly a word of explanation. For this reason, it has
often been proposed that psychotherapies need to be indigenized. Rather than exporting
Euro-American psychotherapies, say, to China, some would encourage Chinese healers to
develop psychotherapies that reflect their philosophies, values, social objectives, and reli-
gious convictions. Yang (1997, 1999), for example, has suggested that Chinese counselors
can more easily help resolve the paradoxes and dilemmas that characterize Chinese village,
10 | Chapter 1
family, and personal life than non-Chinese can. Likewise, Hoshmand (2005, p. 3) avers
that “indigenous culture provides native ways of knowing what is salient and congruent
with the local ethos and what are credible ways of addressing human problems,” a view
supported by Marsella and Yamada (2000). Similarly, Cross and Markus (1999) note that
“the articulation of a truly universal understanding of human nature and personality . . .
requires the development of theories of behavior originating in the indigenous psycholo-
gies of Asian, Latin American, African, and other non-Western societies” (p. 381).
Even within the same society, intergenerational differences in a culture are as strik-
ing and important as the cross-national. These differences are apparent in attitudes
about single-member households, premarital sex, marriage and divorce, family struc-
ture, religious practices and beliefs, sexual preferences, modesty and skin exposure, use
of drugs, and myriad other lifestyle choices. The complex challenges these issues present
to mental-health service providers will be more fully addressed in Chapter 15.
Negotiating Fault Lines in the EBT Terrain LO5
Psychotherapy: an Art or a Science?

The American Psychological Association (2006) established a task force to deal with the
vexing problem of evidence in psychology. In short, to what extent should practice (and
payment policies) be informed, guided, and limited by science? As the task force noted,
In a given clinical circumstance, psychologists of good faith and good judgment may disagree
about how best to weigh different forms of evidence; over time, we presume that systematic
and broad empirical inquiry—in the laboratory and in the clinic—will point the way toward
best practice in integrating best evidence. . . . [However] Clinical decisions should be made
in collaboration with the patient on the basis of the best clinically relevant evidence and with
consideration for the probable costs, benefits, and available resources and options. It is the
treating psychologist who makes the ultimate judgment regarding a particular intervention
or treatment plan. The involvement of an active, informed patient is generally crucial to the
success of psychological services. (p. 280)
As in earlier editions of Current Psychotherapies, the contributors to this book have

wrestled with this issue. Many serious fault lines in the terrain define this debate, and al-
though they have all been addressed by the professions serving the mental-health needs
of society, they still constitute threats to clinical credibility.
Patients typically work in session with one therapist for 50 minutes a week, but they
are exposed for the rest of the week to innumerable contingencies outside the clinic
that can confound fine-tuned plans and firm resolve. Many of these contingencies are
unforeseen and beyond their control. Paul Meehl (1978) called these random events
context-dependent stochastologicals (p. 812). They are a tangle of variables internal and
external to the person that intertwine with job stresses, financial concerns, troubled chil-
dren, angry spouses or in-laws, difficult colleagues, bad weather, life-threatening illness,
contested insurance claims, and the forgotten baggage of personal history and past de-
feats. All patients have a unique set of such variables, but to make the situation even
more complicated they are often afflicted by many distinct disorders—some overlap-
ping. This comorbidity—difficult in itself to determine (Hayes et al., 2011)—complicates
the diagnostic coding of disorders and patients for purposes of validating therapy for
them (Beutler & Baker, 1998). For many practitioners and onlookers, the science of
prognosticating outcomes in psychotherapy inspires as much confidence as predictions
of stock-market fluctuations. There is simply too much opacity in the universe of vari-
ables, known and unknown, to make confident prognoses.
Spontaneity and Intuition: “Throw-Ins”
Readers of this book will be faced with clients who present complex puzzles to them,
each client manifesting varying degrees of anxiety, coping skills, and emotional stability.
They often have no clear idea what their treatment will consist of or how effective this
expensive service will be. Long before clinical interns enter this arena, they will need
to have made some multilayered existential choices: whether (or not) to become arti-
sanal therapists, manual-based “craftsmen,” or complex humanistic variants between
these two extremes. Yalom (1980) wrote about a group course in cooking he once took
with an Armenian chef. As she spoke, the students learned by watching. Besides noting
the main ingredients, Yalom observed that as the pots and skillets were shuffled from
counter to stove, a variety of spices were tossed in—a pinch of this and a pinch of that.
“I am convinced,” he wrote, “those surreptitious throw-ins made all the difference”
(p. 3). He likened this process to psychotherapy. Often unknown to therapists, it’s their
unscripted “throw-ins” that can make all the difference.
I include at this point a slightly redacted excerpt written by Ray Corsini that
appeared in previous editions of this book. It is reminiscent of the throw-ins that Yalom
wrote about—less a traditional version of psychotherapy than a conversational but ther-
apeutic throw-in. It demonstrates how a verbal intervention, even in a nonclinical set-
ting, can alter a person’s life—in this case, for the better. This anecdote has implications
for our daily social lives.
An Unusual Example of Psychotherapy

A Corsini Throw-In
About 50 years ago, when I was working as a psychologist correspondence course in drafting, and I have a draft-
at Auburn Prison in New York, I participated in what I ing job when I leave Thursday. I started back to church
believe was the most successful and elegant psychotherapy even though I had given up my religion many years
I have ever done. One day an inmate, who had made an ago. I started writing to my family and they have come
appointment, came into my office. He was a fairly attrac- up to see me and they remember you in their prayers.
tive man in his early 30s. I pointed to a chair, he sat down, I now have hope. I know who and what I am. I know
and I waited to find out what he wanted. The conversa- I will succeed in life. I plan to go to college. You have
tion went something like this (P 5 prisoner; C 5 Corsini): freed me. I used to think you bug doctors [prison slang
for psychologists and psychiatrists] were for the birds,
P: I’m leaving on parole Thursday.
but now I know better. Thanks for changing my life.
C: Yes?
I listened to this tale in wonderment, because to the best
P: I didn’t want to leave until I thanked you for what you
of my knowledge I had never spoken with him. I looked
had done for me.
at his folder and the only notation there was that I had
C: What was that? given him an IQ test about two years before. “Are you
P: When I left your office about two years ago, I felt like sure it was me?” I finally said. “I’m not a psychothera-
I was walking on air. When I went into the prison yard, pist, and I have no memory of ever having spoken to you.
everything looked different, even the air smelled dif- What you are reporting is the sort of personality and be-
ferent. I was a new person. Instead of going over to the havior change that takes many years to accomplish—and
group I usually hung out with—they were a bunch of I certainly haven’t done anything of the kind.”
thieves—I went over to another group of square Johns “It was you, all right,” he replied with great conviction,
[prison jargon for noncriminal types]. I changed from “and I will never forget what you said to me. It changed
a cushy job in the kitchen to the machine shop, where my life.”
I could learn a trade. I started going to the prison high “What was that?” I asked.
school and I now have a high school diploma. I took a “You told me I had a high IQ,” he replied.
12 | Chapter 1
An Unusual Example of Psychotherapy (continued )
With one brief sentence I had (inadvertently) changed that explained everything. In a flash, he understood why
this person’s life. he could solve crossword puzzles better than any of his
Let us try to understand this event. If you are clever friends. He now knew why he read long novels rather than
enough to understand why this man changed so drastical- comic books, why he preferred to play chess rather than
ly as a result of hearing these five words, “You have a high checkers, why he liked symphonies as well as jazz. With
IQ,” my guess is that you have the capacity to be a good great and sudden intensity he realized through my five
therapist. words that he was really normal and bright and not crazy
I asked him why this sentence about his IQ had such or stupid. He had experienced an abreaction that ordinari-
a profound effect, and I learned that up to the time that ly would take months. No wonder he had felt as if he were
he heard these five words, he had always thought of walking on air when he left my office two years before!
himself as “stupid” and “crazy”—terms that had been His interpretation of my five words generated a
applied to him many times by his family, teachers, and complete change of self-concept—and consequently a
friends. In school, he had always received poor grades, change in both his behavior and his feelings about himself
which confirmed his belief in his mental subnormality. His and others. In short, I had performed psychotherapy in a
friends did not approve of the way he thought and called completely innocent and informal way. Even though there
him crazy. And so he was convinced that he was both an was no agreement between us, no theory, and no intention
ament (low intelligence) and a dement (insane). But when of changing him—the five-word comment had a most
I said, “You have a high IQ,” he had an “aha!” experience pronounced effect, and so it was psychotherapy.
Manualization of Treatment LO6
Spontaneous, unplanned throw-ins are hardly a basis for a science of psychotherapy.

Doing psychotherapy in this manner makes it more like a craft or, at its pinnacle—as
Yalom and other gifted therapists do it—an art. Even repeatedly demonstrating that
one can improve client well-being and achieve therapeutic objectives by a manual-
ized series of interventions does not explain how the variables have caused the out-
come. Intensive research has been conducted in the last decade precisely to identify
the mechanisms that are bringing about change. Although ambitious programs of pro-
cess research, as distinguished from outcome research, are being conducted (e.g., see
Constantino, Boswell, Coyne, Kraus, & Castonguay, 2017; Llewelyn, Macdonald, &
Aafjes-van Doorn, 2016), the identity of the causal links and their nature are not yet fully
understood. Such understanding will only surface when we have a mature neurobiology
that can describe the organism’s interaction with its environment. This, of course, will
further facilitate the integration of psychologists as professional co-equals in medical
primary care facilities. These challenges are obviated for those who are only seeking
manualized approaches to therapy—that is, sets of sequential, algorithmized steps
for proceeding through phases of therapy (see Prochaska, Norcross, & DiClemente,
2013, for one cogent model).
There are several practical advantages to manualized psychotherapy. Engineering
therapy in the guise of an architecture of stages or building blocks makes sense peda-
gogically. One proceeds from the known to the unknown and untried in a methodical,
stepwise fashion, clearly specifying layered objectives and mobilizing the personal,
social, and institutional resources that are so useful—and so often necessary. These
processes through which the patient can be guided are amenable to various configura-
tions. The chapters of this book (2 through 15) have been structured in such a way that
the enterprising student can design a manual for each, using the elements as they are
presented.
Obstacles to a Science of Psychotherapy
The sheer number of potent situational, somatic, and psychological variables that must be
considered when computing the outcome variances of diverse therapies for a client dwarfs
considerations of procedural variables. Moreover, citing numerous studies, Michael
Mahoney wrote in 1991 “the person of the therapist is at least eight times more influen-
tial than his or her theoretical orientation and/or use of specific therapeutic techniques”
(p. 346). Norcross and Beutler (2019) maintain that there are “tens of thousands of poten-
tial permutations and combinations of patient, therapist, treatment, and setting variables
that could contribute” to improving treatment decisions (p. 537). They noted the earlier
studies of Beutler and colleagues who conducted analyses of these numerous variables
with a sample of depressed patients. They reduced “tens of thousands” to a manageable
number, trusting that the loss of specificity in their constructs would not overshadow the
utility of their generic approach. This is analogous to the task undertaken by Allport and
Odbert (1936), and several generations of trait psychologists who followed them, who
reduced 18,000 personality descriptors to a handful of core personality factors using the
factor-analytic techniques largely developed by Raymond B. Cattell.
The immensity of the task weighs on us when we consider the hundreds of other
disorders cataloged in the current DSM and the World Health Organization’s Interna-
tional Classification of Diseases that call for varied treatments on the one hand and evoke
Meehl’s innumerable random events on the other. But proposing many therapies that
are disorder-specific is as vexing a proposition as proposing one therapy that can pur-
portedly remedy all personality disorders as defined, say, in the DSM. Nevertheless, the
complex and changing context of our patients’ daily lives is like a headwind that keeps
pushing us back toward Yalom’s kitchen and pulling us outside the comfortable concep-
tual boxes in which we have been trained.
Sources of Hope
The pursuit of what works in psychotherapy is more important to a pragmatic species
such as Homo sapiens than the pursuit of why it works. This is especially true in applied
and highly practical disciplines. But like wave and particle theories in the physics of
light, art and science in psychotherapy are not incompatible paradigms. Both are valid,
and elements of both appear in every clinical session. As unanticipated material comes
to light, all clinicians to one degree or another rely on intuitive inspiration and creative
imagination in deciding what to do next.
Some therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy
are more amenable to manualization than others such as existential psychotherapy, but
they ought not to be preferred simply for that reason. On the other hand, the manualiza-
tion of therapies must not be caricatured simply as a cookbook approach to treating dis-
orders. The variables and the random events that frequently pop up in a patient’s life and
complicate therapists’ best-thought-out plans require adjustment and compromise, and
clinical judgment and creativity are always essential elements in successful psychother-
apy. Pursuing the mirage of a blueprint that unfolds seamlessly from start to finish entails
a loss of therapists’ time and effectiveness and drains patients’ emotional and financial
resources. There is room in evidence-based therapies and manualized therapies for the
poetry, spirituality, spontaneity, sentiment, free will, and even the mystery and romance
of human self-discovery and growth that both patients and humanistically inclined thera-
pists crave. There should be no tension between getting better and feeling better. In fact,
like butter in the batter, affect and reason are as inseparable here as elsewhere.
14 | Chapter 1
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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Current Psychotherapies 11th Edition,

1 Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies / Frank Dumont 1

2 Psychodynamic Psychotherapies / Jeremy D. Safran, Alexander Kriss,

3 Adlerian Psychotherapy / Michael P. Maniacci

6 Behavior Therapy / Martin M. Antony 199

7 Cognitive Therapy / Aaron T. Beck and Marjorie E. Weishaar 237

Case Readings 269

8 Existential Psychotherapy / Irvin D. Yalom and Ruthellen Josselson 273

10 Interpersonal Psychotherapy / Helen Verdeli and Myrna M. Weissman 349

11 Family Therapy / Irene Goldenberg and Mark Stanton 391

12 Mindfulness and Other Contemplative Therapies / Roger Walsh and Frances

13 Positive Psychotherapy / Tayyab Rashid and Martin Seligman 481

14 Integrative Psychotherapies / John C. Norcross and Larry E. Beutler 527

15 Multicultural Theories of Psychotherapy / Lillian Comas-Díaz 561

16 Contemporary Challenges and Controversies / Kenneth S. Pope

Martin M. Antony Therapy. He teaches Gestalt therapy nationally

This new edition of Current Psychotherapies reflects a commitment to maintaining

2 Examine the impact of emergent biological sciences on mentalistic

3 Learn how controlling environmental events can therapeutically

6 Examine manualization of psychotherapy and its limitations.

Historical Foundations of Psychotherapy

Mesmer and Schopenhauer

Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 3

Psychotherapy-Related Science in the 19th Century

The Psychologist Philosophers

Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 5

The Impact of the Biological Sciences

Epigenetics: Neuroscience’s Novel Contributions

Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 7

Organicists and Dynamicists: Clashing Standpoints

Nurture is profoundly shaped by nature. Indeed, as Robert Plomin and Avshalom

Evolutionary Biology and Behavioral Genetics

Cultural Factors and Psychotherapy LO4

Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 9

Language and Metaphor

Negotiating Fault Lines in the EBT Terrain LO5

Psychotherapy: an Art or a Science?

As in earlier editions of Current Psychotherapies, the contributors to this book have

Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 11

An Unusual Example of Psychotherapy

Manualization of Treatment LO6

Spontaneous, unplanned throw-ins are hardly a basis for a science of psychotherapy.

Introduction to 21st-Century Psychotherapies | 13

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

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