The Great Psychotherapy Debate: Models, Methods, and Findings comprehensively reviews the literature to show that a medical model of psychology inadequately explains decades of research. The author presents two competing models: The medical model, which assumes that the specific actions in specified therapies are necessary to produce benefits, and the contextual model, which assumes that the healing context, the therapist's and the client's belief in therapy, the relationship between the therapist and the client, the rationale for the treatment and therapeutic actions consistent with the rationale, and the meaning that the client attributes to therapy are critical. The author contends that the research evidence is consistent with theoretical predictions based on the contextual model and inconsistent with predictions based on the medical model.The author reviews the literature related to the absolute efficacy of psychotherapy, the relative efficacy of various treatments, the specificity of ingredients contained in established therapies, the effects due to common factors such as the working alliance, effects due to adherence and allegiance to the therapeutic protocol, and the effects produced by different therapists. In each case, the evidence convincingly corroborates the contextual model and disconfirms a medical model of psychotherapy. Implications for the delivery of mental health services, for psychotherapy research, and for the training of therapists is discussed. Book Review

Reviewer Comments on the Great Psychotherapy Debate: Models, Methods, and Findings
Bruce E. Wampold, Ph.D.
(Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)

"The Great Psychotherapy Debate does not break new ground; instead it plows it like it has never been plowed before. With scrupulous care and unquestioned fairness, Bruce Wampold has assumed the mantle of foremost proponent of the 'general factors' explanation for psychotherapy efficacy. This work will reverberate far beyond the narrow confines of the seminar room. It touches the most important policy questions that will be faced by the clinical uses of psychology in the next decade."

--Gene V Glass
Arizona State University

"I believe this book is destined to become a classic in the psychotherapy literature because it offers a logical theory to explain decades of perplexing empirical findings on psychotherapy outcomes. The book is revolutionary. It challenges the long-held belief that psychotherapy can best be understood from a medical model and presents a radical new approach to understanding why psychotherapy works. Like a good detective novel, the author presents the problem, offers competing hypotheses, then goes about meticulously fitting existing empirical evidence into the competing hypotheses. By the time the reader gets to the end, the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the author's contextual model."

--Martin Ritchie
University of Toledo

" This is a fascinating book that is well-reasoned, thoroughly documented, and clearly written. The logic of the author's presentation is persuasive without being adversarial. The thesis is one that will challenge many in the psychological establishment. I will most certainly adopt this book for use in my own graduate training program in counseling psychology and I will recommend it to others. I think the book is suitable for use in both introductory and advanced courses in psychology and counseling theory.

--James Lichtenberg
University of Kansas

"I am not engaging in hyperbole when I say that it is the best scientific analysis of psychotherapy ever written. It is certain to have a sensational impact on the psychological community, and in particular, those scientists who are concerned with teasing out the mechanisms of therapeutic change."

--Charles Claiborn
Claiborn, Arizona State University.