ABSTRACT
This review of the best outcome research in psychotherapy-individual, group, and family-leads to a conclusion about the "ordinary" methods of psychotherapy that are virtually identical with the National Academy of Sciences' conclusions relative to biofeedback, training, extrasensory perception, and the other "extraordinary," "unconventional" methods of enhancing human performance. There is not one credible, definitive test of the value of individual and group therapy or marital therapy. There is no credible replication of any research. The methodological and scholarly inadequacies of psychotherapy outcome research set the entire psychotherapeutic enterprise outside of science. The literature's susceptibility to subjectivity and a host of biases suggests that the field has constructed a defensive narrative for professional advantage rather than an objective, scientific estimate of psychotherapy's effectiveness. The scientific level of inquiry in psychotherapy is still immature, producing a professionally self-serving body of emotion covered in the robes of science. Paradoxically the field's vulgarized research exemplifies the postmodern critique-subservience to social power-even while it is itself a victim of the weaknesses of postmodern forms of research.
