ABSTRACT
There is an ongoing debate about how psychotherapy leads to clinical improvements in patients (Horvath & Symonds, 1991). On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that the effects of psychotherapy are best explained by common factors present in any psychotherapy (e.g. therapeutic alliance, expectancy of improvement, therapeutic context). Data supporting this point of view comes from large meta-analyses of outcome studies (Stevens, Hynan, & Allend, 2000). From this perspective, psychotherapy is generally best viewed as non-specific treatment and those components that are specific to a particular psychotherapy contribute little to the overall outcome. On the other hand, there are data that support that the effects of psychosocial interventions are specific and not solely a result of these common factors (DeRubeis, Brotman, & Gibbons, 2005). Whether a treatment’s effects are specific or non-specific is not merely an academic question, because the answer could inform decisions about which treatments to disseminate and implement.
