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“My Mother Made Me Do It”: An Interview with Don Meichenbaum on the Origins of CBT (Plus: Tips for Surviving COVID-19)
Imagine having the distinction of being voted one of the top 10 most influential psychotherapists of the 20th Century. Psychologist Don Meichenbaum is that person. In his spare time, together with Arron Beck and Marvin Goldfried, he created the most popular and researched method of psychotherapy in use today: cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT). I got to… — read more
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The Missing Link: Why 80% of People who could benefit will never see a Therapist
The facts are startling. Despite being on the scene for close to 150 years, the field of mental health–and psychotherapy in particular–does not, and never has had mass appeal. Epidemiological studies consistently show, for example, the majority of people who could benefit from seeing a therapist, do not go. And nowadays, fewer and fewer are… — read more
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The Asch Effect: The Impact of Conformity, Rebelliousness, and Ignorance in Research on Psychology and Psychotherapy
Consider the photo above. If you ever took Psych 101, it should be familiar. The year is 1951. The balding man on the right is psychologist, Solomon Asch. Gathered around the table are a bunch of undergraduates at Swarthmore College participating in a vision test. Briefly, the procedure began with a cardboard printout displaying three… — read more
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The Replication Crisis in Psychology: What is and is NOT being talked about
Psychology has been in the headlines a fair bit of late—and the news is not positive. I blogged about this last year, when a study appeared documenting that the effectiveness of CBT was declining–50% over the last four decades. The problem is serious. Between 2012 and 2014, for example, a team of researchers working together… — read more
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Common versus Specific Factors and the Future of Psychotherapy: A Response to Siev and Chambless
Early last summer, I received an email from my long time friend and colleague Don Meichenbaum alerting me to an article published in the April 2009 edition of the Behavior Therapist–the official "newsletter" of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies–critical of the work that I and others have done on the common factors. Briefly, the article,… — read more
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History doesn’t repeat itself,
Image via Wikipedia "History doesn’t repeat itself," the celebrated American author, Mark Twain once observed, "but it does rhyme." No better example of Twain’s wry comment than recurring claims about specifc therapeutic approaches. As any clinician knows, every year witnesses the introduction of new treatment models. Invariably, the developers and proponents claim superior effectivess of… — read more
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The Evolution of Psychotherapy: Twenty-Five Years On
In 1985, I was starting my second year as a doctoral student at the University of Utah. Like thousands of other graduate students, I’d watched the "Gloria" films. Carl Roger, Albert Ellis, Fritz Perls were all impressive if not confusing given their radically different styles. I also knew that I would soon have the opportunity to meet each one live… — read more