The purpose of this research is to examine psychological eclectic theory as an integration of theoretical schools, including psychoanalytic, dispositional, phenomenological, behavioral, and classical. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which eclectic theory has arisen in connection with psychotherapy, and then to discuss various approaches to the subject in the literature.
Controversy exists in the psychotherapeutic community with regard to whether the theoretical orientation of eclecticism is either appropriate or useful as an approach to psychotherapy. Chater and Oaksford (1993) deplore a whole range of attributes associated with eclectic theory on several grounds. Lumping a number of different, often opposing, theories into one, they say, amounts to a theory that is defined in terms of itself, or is the result of a circular argument. Picking and choosing from among theories and calling the result an integrated approach amounts to a less rigorous intellectual and theoretical enterprise in this view. Chater and oaksford hold that amalgamating a variety of theories leads to no theory in particular. Another view is that the very process of theoretical integration has the potential to take what is most valuable from a variety of theoretical emphases and reinterpret theoretical validity to come up with a coherent methodological and conceptual approach to psychotherapy. In this regard, Arkowitz (1989) specifically says that theory has a significant role to play in the process of integrating psychotherapy practice and that various theories touch on various aspects of the process of client change in useful ways. Nicoll's more recent (1993) description of what he calls Multiple Systems Counseling or MSC suggests that there is an emerging body of work engaged by the task of structuring integrative or eclectic theory from both practice and preceding theoretical foundations. Specifically, Nicoll favors a co...