ABSTRACT
The conceptual and procedural problems in assessment of the effectiveness of psychotherapy are daunting. It is not possible here to review the many approaches that have been offered. Each approach raises its own technical issues and reflects a particular value base. The problems are so great that many psychotherapists have retreated from the problem altogether or become content to theorize the impossibility of the task. In the public sector the profession faces demands for "evidence based practice" and measurements of outcomes on the model of the randomized clinical trial. Many individuals report that they have found psychotherapy to have been helpful to them. Just as attachment theory does not claim to be a complete theory of the personality so it enables the setting of more limited and specific objectives for psychotherapy—and therefore of criteria against which to assess whether psychotherapy is working.
