‘Working with goals in psychotherapy and counselling’ is book written and edited by Mick Cooper and Duncan Law and published by Oxford University Press published January 2018 and available from all good bookshops.

Recent evidence suggests that working with goals in counselling and psychotherapy can support positive therapeutic change. Goals can empower clients and give them hope: helping them feel that they have the capacity to act towards achieving their desired futures. Goals can help focus, and direct, clients’ and therapists’ attention, building a better therapeutic alliance. Through negotiating and setting goals, clients can develop a deeper insight into what it is they really want in life: a crucial first step towards being able to get there.

Policy developments in both child and adult mental health services support the use of goals in therapy. Goal-setting and goal-tracking can help to ensure that therapy is personalised to the individual client: so that they are working towards objectives that are of genuine importance to them.

The historical developments of psychological therapies have led to differing cultures, psychologies, and philosophical assumptions and brought about varying attitudes and approaches to goals in therapeutic practice. Working with Goals in Counselling and Psychotherapy brings this range of attitudes and approaches together in one volume making it the definitive, critical guide for therapists of any orientation.

The book provides practical advice on how to help clients set, and work towards, personalised goals; the tools that are available to support these processes; and the theoretical and empirical foundations of this work. It is essential reading for all therapists interested in goals in counselling, psychotherapy and psychological therapies, and how they can be used to optimise therapeutic change.