ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses psychotherapy and its relationship to science. The ancient Greeks were the first to classify disorders of thinking, feeling, and behaving as medical/scientific in nature though some of their notions seem bizarre today. Nevertheless, scientific thinking can contribute to improved psychotherapy, both through its methods of inquiry and the application of its research findings. Clearly defining the problem to be addressed by psychotherapy provides the foundation for intervention. Psychiatric diagnosis serves the purpose of providing generally observable criteria that justify intervention and some minimal guidance for initiating an intervention. There are limitations of this attempt to classify disorders of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Psychiatrist Aaron Beck was an early proponent of cognitive therapy, with its focus on conscious, not unconscious, thinking. Theorizing that disorders of emotion and behavior have their roots in distortions of thinking, cognitive-behavioral therapy embraced scrutiny by scientific methods.
