ABSTRACT
An era of breakthrough progress could be within reach of psychotherapy research on three of our field’s most longstanding, difficult, and pivotal questions. The preceding view, which is elucidated in this chapter, is based on two key premises. First, achievements in therapy research over the past 55 years plus related developments have brought three fundamental questions to the fore:
What is the nature of the problem to be treated?
What are the primary mechanisms of action of efficacious therapies?
Can more efficient and efficacious psychotherapeutic methods be developed?
Second, new opportunities exist to answer the questions timely and persuasively from a scientific perspective. The opportunities arise from: (a) methods and findings now referred to as a “scientific revolution” in the neurosciences, and (b) method developments that support causal inference about how and why therapies work, that is, their mechanisms of action.