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The authors report on a survey project sponsored by the NIMH on the current status of research in psychotherapy. They specifically limit themselves to individual psychotherapy for neurotic and characterological problems and to three therapeutic models: behavior modification, client-centered therapy, and psychoanalysis. Their extensive review of the literature on research in the therapeutic process and critiques of this review by nine consultants were previously published in the International Journal of Psychiatry in 1969.
The major part of the current work is a chronological account of personal interviews by the authors of some twenty-five different workers throughout the country in the field of research in psychotherapy. Each interview is followed by a critical evaluation by one of the authors, and, throughout the entire sequence, are interspersed various working papers and correspondence related to their project and to the general status of research in the field. As a result one can sense the evolution in their thinking and the gradual modification of some of their plans and ideas as the project unfolded.
The book also makes clear the enormous complexities of scientific work in this research area, and illustrates how some of the workers in the field attempt to simplify them. Issues such as clinical relevance versus scientific rigor, natural therapeutic process as currently practiced versus an experimental paradigm which can be more effectively controlled, statistical elegance versus natural complexity, etc., are repeatedly emphasized. There are frequent discussions of the issues involved in patient variables, therapist variables, and multiple attempts to establish common factors in the therapeutic process relatable to different theoretical approaches. There are also attempts to focus on the problem of theoretical technique vis-à-vis the personality and personal characteristics of the therapist and the various nonspecific aspects of the therapeutic