ABSTRACT
Given the profusion of approaches to psychotherapyÐeven cognitive-behavioral approachesÐit is not surprising that many psychotherapy theorists, and many more practitioners, have for the last 20 years or more advocated some form of integration of the disparate models and methods (Goldfried, 1995; Norcross, 1986). Ironically, however, approaches to psychotherapy integration are themselves multiple, with each differing importantly in its assumptions and objectives (R. A. Neimeyer, 1993b). At the least ambitious end of the continuum, integration might simply mean technical eclecticism, tolerating or encouraging the therapist's adopting ``whatever works,'' or seems to work, in assisting a given client (Whitaker & Keith, 1981). Though common in practice, it is rarely championed by psychotherapy scholars and researchers, because its unsystematic penchant to borrow any super®cially attractive technique in the absence of orienting principles or heuristics leaves the therapist rudderless in the often uncharted waters of psychotherapeutic processÐ interpreting transference patterns at one moment, disputing irrational thoughts at another, and using paradoxical interventions at a third. As an alternative, in systematic eclecticism the therapist selects an approachÐsuch as directive, behavioral interventions or more exploratory, emotion-focused workÐ depending on the characteristics of the client, such as his or her degree of ``psychological reactance'' to being controlled by another, or tendency to construe life problems in externalizing or internalizing terms (Beutler & Clarkin, 1990). Although the attempt to inform therapist intuition about ``what to use when'' with data-based predictions is commendable, evidence concerning the effectiveness of this ``matching'' orientation is equivocal
(Baker & Neimeyer, 2003). More claimed that even a successful program of eclecticism would represent not so much a form of psychotherapy integration as a form of systematic pluralism, permitting more informed switching between orientations without promoting their assimilation into a larger, more coherent, conceptual framework.
