Integratively oriented brief psychotherapy: Historical perspective and contemporary approaches.

Assumptions, principles, and strategies characterizing brief individual psychotherapy create a rich context for pursuing and investigating psychotherapy integration. This special issue presents representative approaches demonstrating the fruitful confluence of these 2 movements. The evolutio no f both brief therapy and psychotherapy integration is reviewed to historically contextualize the ensuing articles, with the inevitable conjunction between these 2 major psychotherapeutic currents underscored. The lens then expands to focus on the diverse array of contemporary approaches to integratively oriented brief therapy, noting their situatedness along several dimensions. The fundamental attitude and central technical principles permeating brief integrative therapies are then presented, followed by brief summarization and discussion of the subsequent articles. Two commentaries appraising the approaches presented herein will appear in the March 2004 issue of the journal.