Today I found a creepy AI audio summary of the 3rd edition of our theories text. Maybe I should have liked it, because it was super-glowing. But the AI voice overweening on my behalf felt wrong.

In contrast, the following content is real and excerpted from our forthcoming 4th edition of Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice

To continue with the creepy, the following is what was generated when I asked ChatGPT to create an image of itself.

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Theories and lenses are tools we use to make sense of our complicated world. We’re not saying that the world is more complicated in 2026 than it was 23 years ago, when the first version of this text was published, but the proliferation of information in the modern digital age means that there’s more to sift through than our brains can handle. We hope this text provides you with intellectual structure, insights, practical tools, and fun companionship on your road to understanding and engaging in counseling and psychotherapy. 

While walking across the University of Montana campus the other day (which is beautiful on any day, but especially during the fall here in Montana), we noticed an annual tradition on campus had recurred—a fresh, large, orange pumpkin was placed on the top of a spire on University Hall, over 100 feet above the ground, just in time for Halloween. The impossibly steep roof of the clock tower, and the brazenness of putting a fresh gourd up there each year (for decades!) leads to speculation—let’s call them theories—about how a pumpkin could possibly make it on top of the spire.

Is it a renegade group of rock climbers who scale the building each October? Is the University somehow complicit in keeping the tradition alive while sternly warning students not to climb the building? With advancements in drone technology, has someone figured out how to hoist a heavy pumpkin and drop it on that precise point? Is it a 3-D optical phenomenon that doesn’t exist other than in socially constructed reality?

Which theory is correct? But what if it’s not one theory; maybe the pumpkin tradition has evolved over time. After decades of being on campus, our guess is, we’ll never know. The same is probably true with theories and lenses of counseling. We’ll never know—for certain—if the perspective we take is “the correct” one. The best we can do is continue learning about human behavior and the theories that explain it and do our best for our clients by using lenses and theories to help understand their unique situations and help make things better. The pumpkin problem is much easier.

We encourage you to carry theories and lenses from this textbook around with you to help you to make sense of the world—not just in terms of counseling and therapy, but in terms of understanding complexities of the world we live in. At a time where there’s a tendency to over-rely on artificial intelligence to get “the answer” to your questions, playing with different theories is good for your neural connectivity—and probably good for your clients’ well-being, because embracing and valuing different perspectives is good for all of us as we try to navigate this wildly complex world.

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We believe in several things: First, we cannot help but be affected by contemporary socio-cultural-political events. Second, regardless of socio-cultural-political movements, the counseling and psychotherapy space needs to be safe, sacred, and inclusive for everyone, and especially people with limited resources, diverse identities, and a history of distress or trauma. Third, although we talk about creating a safe space for clients to explore their lives, our offices are not instantly safe, and simply saying the words, “this is a safe space” won’t magically create trust and safety. We need work with clients to, over time, make it experientially safe.

We hope you can use the theories in this text to create and support an inclusive psychotherapy where positive and transformative work happens.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE FOURTH EDITION?

We’ve been receiving solicited and unsolicited feedback on this “Theories text” since 2003. Most of the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. At conferences, people often approach us and say how much they love this book. They love the anecdotes, our irreverent attitudes, and our occasional efforts at humor. Yes, we believe this theories text is the funniest one on the market. Positive feedback from students and faculty has been incredibly affirming, mostly because our primary goals were to create an engaging, interesting, and practical theories text.

As a side note, we recognize there’s not much competition for funniest theories book on the market. But if there was a formal theories textbook humor competition, we would win hands down.

We’ve also received constructive feedback. Although less affirming, constructive feedback is essential to our personal and professional growth and development. We’ve tried to use constructive feedback to create an even better textbook. We invite you to provide us with whatever type of feedback you like.

So. . .what’s new in the Fourth Edition?

To add perspective to the text, we added a co-author. Bryan Cochran is a professor of psychology and LGBTIQ+ scholar. His voice and perspective are woven into every chapter, but especially our two new chapters. In chapter 2, Bryan describes several lenses that influence how we all practice counseling and psychotherapy. These lenses include: (a) Critical race theory; (b) Queer theory; (c) Intersectionality, and (d) a few other important contemporary perspectives. These lenses are not counseling or psychotherapy theories, but they can and should be used with theories and evidence-based approaches to make us more sensitive, humble, and competent in working with all clients.

In chapter 13, Bryan takes us on a deep dive into third wave behavioral treatments. These treatments include:

1. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR),
2. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT),
3. Prolonged exposure (PE), and
4. The unified protocol (UP).

Each of these treatments incorporate mindfulness; they also have substantial empirical support. Learning about them will make you a better therapist.

To better address culture and social justice issues, we’ve done what Derald Wing Sue recommended 15 years ago. We eliminated the “multicultural chapter” and distributed cultural and diversity content throughout the other chapters, with a big emphasis in chapter 2. Our goal was to more fully integrate diversity into all theoretical approaches. We look forward to hearing from you regarding whether we accomplished that goal.

As before, every chapter includes sub-sections titled (a) cultural sensitivity, (b) gender and sexuality, and (c) spirituality. As it turns out, we still haven’t discovered the neurological basis of everything, but apparently folks are still trying. Neuroscience is featured in chapter 1 and incorporated throughout the text via the “Brain Box” feature that appears in most chapters.

WORDS TO (and from) THE WISE

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Language is liberating and activating. Although we’ve done our best to follow professional language guidelines, no doubt, sometimes you will react to our language choices, our examples, and our content. If we were in the same room as you as you had an emotional reaction, we would say something like, “Thank you for your passion.” And then we would do our best to non-defensively explore your reaction and our language, example, or content. If you engage in class discussions with classmates (or your instructor) about this text, we hope you will afford each other mutual respect and compassion for the emotions that can and will arise from studying counseling and psychotherapy.