Can memetics solve the “dodo bird verdict”? Guidelines for analyzing the evolution of the memetic code in psychotherapists

Abstract

The debate about the differential effectiveness of the different models of psychotherapy and what is known as the “Dodo Bird Verdict”, the fact that equivalent efficacy has been found between different therapeutic approaches, is analyzed in this work from a new perspective: memetics. A meme is a unit of cultural information that is replicated and evolved by selection mechanisms. Memetics is the field that deals with the study of memes and how they are distributed and evolved. The aim of this article is to analyze important issues of psychotherapy and clinical psychology based on the memetics approach. We consider this perspective to have important implications in the conceptualization, research, and improvement of psychotherapy, shedding light on stagnant issues and offering new research possibilities.