Guy du Plessis, a CalSouthern Faculty Mentor in the School of Behavioral Sciences has recently published his new book An Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment: Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model.
Addiction is one of the most ubiquitous forms of mental health disorders globally. In many countries, its burden on health care is so excessive as to constitute a medical and economic crisis. Many scholars agree that two of the foremost problems in the field of addiction science and addiction treatment are definitional confusion and the ineffectiveness of treatment. Consequently, there are many that believe a paradigm shift is urgently needed because there are such an abundance and diversity of addiction theories that the field of addictionology is in “conceptual chaos.” Consequently, there has been a movement in the last 20 years towards integrative and compound models, of which the best know is the biopsychosocial model. Unfortunately, the compound models have not accomplished the much-needed integration. The compound models do not provide a comprehensive meta-framework to integrate the diverse explanatory perspectives or to explain multiple determinants, and often merely provide semantic linking of concepts at best. Moreover, many therapists working within an integrative framework often recognize themselves as eclectic or holistic. Without a sound orientating framework, this can result in syncretism, where therapists haphazardly pick techniques without any overall rationale and consequently resulting in syncretistic confusion.
In an attempt to address the complex problems in the field of addiction studies and treatment, Du Plessis’s book, An Integral Foundation of Addiction Treatment, outlines the application of integral theory as a metatheoretical framework for understanding addiction, as well as a meta-therapeutic framework for therapists. This book provides researchers, academics, and therapists with a foundational framework of addiction and its treatment that is integrative, and comprehensive.
It is rare to find a thoughtful and scholarly blend of theoretical astuteness and clinical wisdom in a single book about addiction…. An Integral Foundation of Addiction Treatment belongs on the shelf of every psychotherapist who treats addiction or is interested in the topic.