Articulating the “New Paradigm” of Psychotherapy Research

Abstract

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1995, Vol 40(11), 1072-1073. This is a review of the book, "Reassessing Psychotherapy Research" (see record 1994-98237-000) by Robert L. Russell (Ed.). With a list of contributors that includes many of the innovators in psychotherapy research, Robert Russell has compiled a volume that will help set the agenda for process research in the future. Chapter authors outline their view of the field, present their critique, and then offer pragmatic alternatives applicable to a wide variety of psychotherapy researchers. As the various assumptions of logical positivism and its variants have come into question, psychotherapy research has been forced to examine its paradigm. Many researchers have turned to postmodern approaches as alternatives only to discover new problems as well as resistance from mainstream researchers. This book comes at a time of possible revision for the field of psychotherapy where the received view research is being critically evaluated in terms of what it does and does not tell us. Some of the most significant contributions in this work include a detailed analysis and critique of the drug metaphor by Shapiro and colleagues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).