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Cameron D. 
“Much, much more important than that”. 
Addiction Reasearch and Theory. 2003 Oct;11(5):367-369.
Abstract
Book review of: Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: a new treatment for drug and alcohol problems. Ed. Andrew Tatarsky. Northvale, N.J. Jason Aronson. (2002) 369pp.

Here we have no more than a collection of case reports on people with alcohol and/or illicit drug problems who have engaged with a number of psychotherapists in the USA. The processes that the nine individual clients have gone through during their therapy are described in great detail and some of the accounts are so vivid that the patients/clients literally leap out of the book to meet you, because you’ve met their sort before. That is all as one would expect from a good psychotherapy book. And one might also expect some sort of commentary on the cases to be provided by the editor: why this was a particularly interesting case, an object lesson for others in the field. That is all there too. So what’s new – what is this “new treatment for drug and alcohol problems”? What’s new is that these are case studies from the USA where the goal of abstinence and dutiful adherence to the disease concept and 12-step approaches to therapy are not observed.
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