The evolution of psychotherapy and the concept of manualization: An integrative perspective.

Abstract

In this article, the author examines some historical perspectives that may help psychologists who have recently been reading more about manualized treatments decide how to incorporate such information into contemporary practice. Even before the "age of manualization," each of the major schools of psychotherapy-psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and family systems therapy-suffered from their own respective limitations in being unable to be exhaustive or definitive about the complexities that routinely take place in clinical practice. Perspectives on the role of manualized psychotherapy, the role of nonspecific factors and the therapeutic alliance, and the respective roles of professionalism and behavioral technology are discussed.In recent years, there has been a movement toward what has been termed the manualization (e.g., Garfield, 1992b) and the textbook practice (Scaturo & McPeak, 1998) of psychotherapy. The development of treatment manuals has emerged from a number of multistudy projects on psychotherapy from various academic research centers across the country. Excellent examples include the behaviorally oriented work on anxiety disorders (e.g., Craske & Barlow, 1989) from Barlow's (1992) Anxiety Research Clinic, time-limited psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy (e.g., Strupp & Binder, 1984) from the Vanderbilt Center for Psychotherapy Research (Henry & Strupp, 1992), and interpersonally oriented psychotherapy (e.g., Klerman, Weissman, Rounsaville, & Chevron, 1984) from the New Haven-Boston Collaborative Depression Research Project. Therapy manuals differ not only in their theoretical orientation but also in their degree of specificity and step-by-step, session-by-session procedural guidelines. DOUGLAS J. SCATURO received his PhD from Claremont Graduate University. He is team leader of the outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), VA Healthcare Network, Upstate New York at Syracuse. He is also a clinical faculty member in the

Supervising Integrative Psychotherapy in the 21st Century: Pressing Needs, Impressing Possibilities

“…These same three schools of thought are also consistent with the selection single theory methods chosen for inclusion in this special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, examining the future of psychotherapy supervision (Farber 2011;Reiser and Milne 2011;Sarnat 2011;Watkins 2011). A slightly different distillation regarding schools of psychotherapy has been identified by Scaturo (2001Scaturo ( , 2005, who has focused on the following three bona fide schools of treatment at the foundation of theoretical pluralism for psychotherapeutic treatment and supervision that have ''withstood the test of time'': psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy; behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy; and, family systems therapy. Additionally, humanistic and client-centered therapy constitutes a major theoretical force in understanding the process of psychotherapy (Scaturo 2002(Scaturo , 2005(Scaturo , 2010b, although its primary contribution to training may be more relevant to teaching effective clinical interviewing skills (Truax and Carkhuff 1967) and negotiating a sound therapeutic alliance (Safran and Muran 2003) rather than as a diagnostic system that contributes substantively to case formulation (Ells 2010).…”

The manualization of a treatment programme for personality disorder

“…The multidisciplinary input means that the theoretical perspectives of the treatment components may differ, although most components are cognitive-behavioural. This is in line with manualization of treatments generally: although psychodynamic and interpersonal psychotherapies have been manualized, most manualized treatments are cognitive-behavioural (Scaturo, 2001). …”

“We may not like it but we guess we have to do it:” Bringing Agency-Based Staff on Board with Evidence-Based Group Work

“…There is growing recognition of the importance of treatment manuals in evidence-based intervention (Galinsky et al, 2006;Scaturo, 2001). Advantages of manuals include their explication of treatment models and their underlying theories.…”