Eclectic Therapy

The majority of psychotherapists and counselors today identify themselves with some form of eclecticism, or "eclectic therapy." Basically, an eclectic therapist borrows techniques from a variety of schools and points of view, and tailors the treatment to the specific needs of each client. In such a manner, theoretical techniques from the various schools of psychology--psychoanalytical, dispositional, phenomenological, and behavioral/cognitive--may be used in accordance with the needs of the patient. Therapeutic techniques may be as varied as the individual's personality dictates, or as uniform as is therapeutically feasible.

Because eclectic approaches to therapy have been widely accepted at the same time they have been widely denounced as "seat of the pants" methods of treatment, two integrative approaches to eclectic therapy will be examined. One approach concentrates on the degree of client readiness to accept any type of multimodal therapy (that which starts where the client is, gradually progressing into more productive areas), while the other attempts to integrate the cognitive/behavioral and affective realms. It will be seen that much research is still needed if eclectic approaches to therapy, which intuitively seem to be effective, are, in fact, empirically verifiable.

Eclectic therapists argue that they are in the best possible position to help clients, because they have every treatment method at their disposal (Thorne, 1973, cited in Houston et al., 1983

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observes, "Whether we want to or not, we live in an era of theoretical skepticism and indeterminacy" (p. 286). Omer (1993) contributes something he calls "the integrative focus" to the synthesis of various theoretical schools. The integrative focus embodies the eclectic assumption that there is no basic level (such as the physiological, the behavioral, the interpersonal, or the psychodynamic) to which all others can be reduced. "Behavior can always be understood from a variety of perspectives. Thus, two contrasting perspectives (the symptomatic and the personal) are given equal weight, and are symmetrically linked in a balanced mutuality; in other words, there is a merger of behavioral and cognitive approaches. Omer (1993) provides a model for his eclectic approach. Whereas most past eclectic approaches have consisted of disparate interventions ("Technique "a" for problem "x," technique "b" for problem "y," etc.), Omer's (1993) integrative approach leads to a coordinated plan of the form: "Define problem "x" so that solving it helps to solve problem "y," and vice-versa" (p. 287). Here is a concrete example of Omer's (1993) eclectic, integrative of therapy for a woman suffering from both claustrophobia and agoraphobia.

Category: Psychology - E