The Empirically-Validated Treatments Movement: A Practitioner Perspective

I would like to weigh in on the issue of what has been called, sequentially, “empirically-validated treatments” (APA Division of Clinical Psychology, 1995), “empirically-supported treatments” (Kendall, 1998), and now “evidence-based practice” (Institute of Medicine, 2001). Empirically-validated treatments is a difficult topic for a practitioner to discuss with clinical scientists. In my attempts to discuss this informally, I have found that some clinical scientists immediately assume that I am anti-science, and others emit a guffaw, asking incredulously: “What, are you for empirically unsupported treatments?” McFall (1991, p. 76) reflects this perspective when he divides the world of clinical psychology into “scientific and pseudoscientific clinical psychology,” and rhetorically asks “what is the alternative [to scientific clinical psychology]? Unscientific clinical psychology.” (see also Lilienfeld, Lohr, & Morier, 2001). There are, thus, some ardent clinical scientists (e.g., McFall and Lilienfeld) who appear to subscribe to scientistic faith, and believe that the superiority of scientific approach is so marked that other approaches should be excluded. Since this is a matter of faith rather than reason, arguments would seem to be pointless. Nonetheless, clinical