ABSTRACT
Many psychologists have observed that the practice of psychotherapy remains surprisingly unaffected by the spate of psychotherapy research during the past half century by psychologists (including Barlow, 1981; Castonguay & Beutler, 2006; Kopta, Lueger, Saunders, & Howard, 1999; and Nathan, Stuart, & Dolan, 2000). Of the several explanations that have been offered, the continuing controversy among researchers on the relative worth of the efficacy and effectiveness models of psychotherapy research bulks large. If psychotherapy researchers, after more than 50 years of trying, cannot agree on how best to assess the worth of a given therapeutic strategy, the logic of this explanation goes, is it any wonder that clinicians do not put much faith in therapy research outcomes and many question the concept of evidence-based treatments? This chapter looks carefully at the data on this issue, past and present, in the effort to understand both why practitioners to date have largely ignored therapy research findings and whether and how they might be induced not to do so in the future.
