Cognitive treatment techniques are now applied to a whole range of psychological disorders and by an ever-growing number of clinicians, as clearly indicated by various chapters in this handbook and by earlier compendia (Foreyt and Rathjen 1978; Kendall and Hollon 1979; Emery et al. 1981). In addition to depression, general anxiety and panic disorders, phobias, eating disorders and obsessional disorders which are discussed in this volume, cognitive techniques have been used in the treatment of pain (Turk and Genest 1979), headaches (Holroyd et al. 1977), anger and stress (Novaco 1979), alcohol dependency (Emery and Fox 1981) and impulsivity in children (Meichenbaum and Asarnow 1979). However, there is no doubt that all of these applications of cognitive therapy depression has been the most systematically researched. It is the quality and promise of this research which has fostered interest in the wider application of cognitive therapy.