Wampold reviews the psychotherapy literature, reanalysing and reinterpreting the data and findings. He challenges our reliance on the medical model for investigating complex interventions and advocates a contextual model as a research paradigm.

Within this, he presents a convincing argument that it is the ingredients that are common to therapy approaches that make them successful rather than those that distinguish them, with the factors that both client and therapist bring to the therapeutic context having greater importance than the methods employed. This is a refreshing and stimulating book, easy to read and one that I would thoroughly recommend to researchers and clinicians.