ABSTRACT
Psychotherapy research has proliferated since the first edition of the Great Psychotherapy Debate. How do we make sense of the ever-accumulating evidence? Clearly there is important evidence imbedded in these results, but culling a cogent story line from this mass of evidence is not easy. With the number of psychotherapy trials and meta-analyses published each year increasing exponentially (see Chapter 4), there is some piece of evidence that one can find to support most any point of view. Consequently, and somewhat tragically, we are having some of the same debates today about psychotherapy that we have had in the past. For example, Eysenck’s claims about the superiority of scientifically based treatments such as behavior therapy are being made in much the same fashion today—as are Rosenzweig’s claim that treatments appear to be equally effective (see Wampold, 2013). Clearly, the evidence needs to be parsed in a coherent way.
