This sixth edition of Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Interventions presents a variety of theories and conceptual frameworks for understanding the parameters of the helping relationship. These parameters can include models for viewing personality development; explaining past behavior; predicting future behavior; understanding the current behavior of the client; diagnosing and planning treatment; assessing client motivations, needs, and unresolved issues; and identifying strategies and interventions for use during the counseling and psychotherapy process.

Theories help organize data and provide guidelines for the prevention and intervention efforts of counselors and therapists. They direct a professional helper's attention and observations and offer constructs, terminology, and viewpoints that can be understood by colleagues and used during supervision and consultation sessions. Theory directly influences the interventions used by counselors and therapists to promote a client's new insight, new behavior, and new approaches to relationships and problem solving. The greater a counselor or therapist's awareness of the strengths and possibilities inherent in numerous theoretical frames of reference, the greater the potential for understanding the uniqueness of a particular client and for developing the most effective treatment plan.

This book is unique in both format and content. All of the contributing authors are experts who provide state-of-the-art information about theories of counseling and psychotherapy (see the “Meet the Contributors” section for their backgrounds). In addition, each chapter discusses applications of theory as they relate to one particular case study: a hypothetical client named Maria to whom we are introduced in the introduction to Part 2. This book also includes information that is sometimes not addressed in other counseling and psychotherapy textbooks, such as the core dimensions of and brief and integrative approaches to the helping relationship, diversity and social justice issues in counseling, feminist theory, dialectical behavior theory, transpersonal theory, constructivist theories, and creative approaches in counseling and psychotherapy. The book's unique approach enhances its readability and should increase reader interest in the material.

We would like to thank the authors who contributed their time and expertise to the development of this book for professionals interested in individual counseling and psychotherapy. We also thank our families, who supported and encouraged our writing and editing efforts. Thanks go out to Carolyn Baker and other staff members of the Publications Department of the American Counseling Association for their collaborative and thorough approach to the editing and production of this book.

Special thanks go to Doug Gross, who so expertly and conscientiously served as coauthor and coeditor of the first five editions of this book, which could never have become a reality without his efforts.

David Capuzzi, PhD, NCC, LPC, is a counselor educator and member of the core faculty in clinical mental health counseling at Walden University and professor emeritus at Portland State University. Previously he served as an affiliate professor in the Department of Counselor Education, Counseling Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services at The Pennsylvania State University and scholar in residence in counselor education at Johns Hopkins University. He is past president of the American Counseling Association (ACA), formerly the American Association for Counseling and Development, and past chair of both the ACA Foundation and the ACA Insurance Trust.

From 1980 to 1984, Dr. Capuzzi was editor of The School Counselor. He has authored a number of textbook chapters and monographs on the topic of preventing adolescent suicide and is coeditor and coauthor with Dr. Larry Golden of Helping Families Help Children: Family Interventions With School Related Problems (1986) and Preventing Adolescent Suicide (1988). He coauthored and coedited with Douglas R. Gross Youth at Risk: A Prevention Resource for Counselors, Teachers, and Parents (1989, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2014), Introduction to the Counseling Profession (1991, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013), Introduction to Group Work (1992, 1998, 2002, 2006; and with Mark Stauffer in 2010), and Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Interventions (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011; coauthored and coedited with Mark Stauffer in 2016). Other texts are Approaches to Group Work: A Handbook for Practitioners (2003), Suicide Across the Life Span (2006), and Sexuality Issues in Counseling (2002), the last coauthored and coedited with Larry Burlew. He has also coauthored and coedited with Mark Stauffer Career Counseling: Foundations, Perspectives, and Applications (2008, 2012) and Foundations of Addictions Counseling (2008, 2012, 2016). He has authored or coauthored articles in a number of ACA journals.

A frequent speaker and keynoter at professional conferences and institutes, Dr. Capuzzi has also consulted with a variety of school districts and community agencies interested in initiating prevention and intervention strategies for adolescents at risk for suicide. He has facilitated the development of suicide prevention, crisis management, and postvention programs in communities throughout the United States; provides training on the topics of youth at risk and grief and loss; and serves as an invited adjunct faculty member at other universities as time permits.

An ACA Fellow, he is the first recipient of ACA's Kitty Cole Human Rights Award and is also a recipient of the Leona Tyler Award in Oregon. In 2010, he received ACA's Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person. In 2011, he was named a distinguished alumni of the College of Education at Florida State University.

Mark D. Stauffer, PhD, NCC, is a core faculty member in the clinical mental health counseling program at Walden University. He specialized in couples, marriage, and family counseling during his graduate work in the Counselor Education Program at Portland State University, where he received his master's degree. He received his doctoral degree from Oregon State University, Department of Teacher and Counselor Education.

As a clinician, Dr. Stauffer has worked in the Portland Metro Area in Oregon at crisis centers and other nonprofit organizations working with low-income individuals, couples, and families. He has studied and trained in the Zen tradition and presents locally and nationally on meditation and mindfulness-based therapies in counseling. His research focus has centered on Eastern methods and East–West collaboration. In private practice, Dr. Stauffer has worked with couples and families from a family systems perspective.

Dr. Stauffer was a Chi Sigma Iota International Fellow and was awarded the American Counseling Association's Emerging Leaders Training Grant. He recently served as the cochair of the American Counseling Association International Committee.

In addition to this counseling textbook with Dr. David Capuzzi, Dr. Stauffer has coedited several textbooks in the counseling field: Introduction to Group Work (2010), Career Counseling: Foundations, Perspectives, and Applications (2006, 2012), Foundations of Addictions Counseling (2008, 2012, 2016), and Foundations of Couples, Marriage and Family Counseling (2015). Dr. Stauffer and Dr. Capuzzi are currently working on a new textbook on human growth and development across the life span to be published by Wiley for use in counselor education programs.