A guide to critical realism and an assessment of its virtues in comparison with other traditions in social science. It criticizes reductionism and determinism in "modernist" social science, along with postmodernism, anti-essentialism and constructionism.

Stephen Palmer is Joint award winner of the Annual Counselling Psychology Award for outstanding professional and scientific contribution to Counselling Psychology in Britain for 2000. `The editors' support for the integrative project is clear, but the book will hold its own with the sceptics too. I recommend it' - Counselling at WorkThis innovative and timely book examines the issues and ideas surrounding integration and eclecticism in a therapeutic context, and provides a detailed account of...