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, p. 656). As Houston et al. (1983) point out, however, "critics counter that it is impossible for the eclectic to know any single method well, because there are just too many methods" (p. 656).
Mahalik (1990) acknowledges the need for credibility among eclectic therapists, while at the same time offering several systematic eclectic models which help to bolster eclectics' claims that they offer what patients need. Mahalik's (1990) four systematic models a...