Windy Dryden must be one of the most prolific writers of self-help books on psychological therapy; most of which are easy to read and thoughtful. This book takes eight emotional states and examines them in terms of their network of thoughts, beliefs and behaviours from a Rationally Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) approach, rooted in a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) tradition. REBT perhaps owes more to the original thoughts of Albert Ellis and his Rationally Emotive Therapy than that of a Beckian approach to CBT, although in essence it is merely a matter of emphasis. Eight chapters cover the eight emotional states: anxiety, depression, shame, guilt, unhealthy anger, hurt, unhealthy jealousy, and envy. The same structure is applied to each chapter looking at key points about the condition: the main beliefs, attitudes and thoughts, combined with behavioural responses. The structure is repetitive but facilitates comparison of similarities and differences. This is a book aimed at helping people understand emotional states and does not refer at all to any form of treatment. There are no references in the text but one reference at the end of each chapter and one recommended self-help book, which interestingly happens to be a book written by Windy Dryden. The author has written eight separate books on each of these emotional states for the Sheldon Press Self-Help series and this book is very much a summary of the skeleton of those books.

The exercise of comparing these emotional states illustrates the similar thoughts and behavioural styles that lie at the heart of all these problems: first, there is the rigid, demanding thinking full of “musts, oughts and shoulds” with high expectations for themselves and others; second, there is a distorted, absolutist type of thinking, splitting into “black and white”, “all or nothing” styles; third, there is avoidance or a variation on avoidance, whether it be safety behaviours, withdrawal, distraction, neutralizing or blaming others. If a person has these three tendencies then they are likely to be vulnerable to any or all of the eight listed emotional states.

The chapters on the less popular emotional states of jealousy, shame, envy and guilt are more interesting than the more frequently researched states such as anxiety and depression. There is also a useful table at the back of the book where the different emotional states are compared, looking at cognitive consequences, action tendencies (behaviour) and inferences in relation to personal domain. The final chapter is entitled “How People Maintain Emotional Problems”, which has a number of useful insights, particularly about people not taking responsibility for their own difficulties, but blaming others such as parents, genes, past environment. Again the final chapter appears to be a summary of a Windy Dryden book.

In summary, I thought that this was a useful, interesting and stimulating book for clinicians wanting to compare the cognitive and behavioural frameworks of these eight different emotional states, noticing similarities and differences. However, it is very dense, with numerous bullet points and not a great deal of running text. I could almost imagine that the book was dictated from eight separate lectures on the eight different emotional states. The book does look a little rushed and a little more discussion about the comparisons and a few more references would have been helpful.