Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [400]
—social phobia: exposure-based procedures and multicomponent CBT effectively reduce or eliminate the symptoms.
—specific phobias: exposure-based procedures, especially in vivo exposure, eliminate most or all components of specific phobia disorders.
All of which is as convincing an answer to the question “But does it really work?” as anyone could ask for.
The new forms of outcome research and the moral (and financial) pressure of the evidence-based ethos are making psychotherapy, in alliance with psychopharmacology, increasingly scientific and increasingly effective. Perhaps even the specter of Wundt, were he presented with the data, might relax his dark scowl and grudgingly nod approval.
* DSM-III, the 1980 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of diagnosis, and DSM-III-R, the 1987 revision, omit “neuroses” as a diagnostic category and identify the disturbances formerly grouped under that label as separate categories of mental disorder. “Neurosis” and “neurotic” are, however, still informally used by both practitioners and the laity, and will be so used here.
* Overall data are hard to come by, because psychotherapy is not a regulated profession and many kinds of professionals practice it. Paul Crits-Christoph, director of the Center for Psychotherapy Research at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview for this book that a 1990 survey of 423 psychotherapists found that over two thirds identified themselves as eclectic in orientation, but that the majority of these eclectic therapists said that they most often used a psychodynamic orientation, and an additional 17 percent identified themselves as purely psychodynamic. (But as we will see, later estimates indicate that somewhat lower figures now prevail.)
* Apparently, he was not aware that in 1924 a psychologist named Mary Cover Jones had used classical conditioning techniques to cure a three-year-old boy of a phobia of furry things by pairing the appearance of a rabbit, first far off and then closer, with his enjoyment of favorite foods.
* Since 1993 it is also sometimes called “rational emotive behavior therapy,” or REBT.
* Ellis was using the patient’s own figures for the sake of argument (the number of homosexuals per hundred males is, of course, rather larger). He also has said (in a personal communication) that he was not agreeing with the patient that being a homosexual is bad but merely showing him that thinking it would be bad would not actually make him a bad person.
* Past tense, because these days Beck limits himself to research and training. The Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research that he founded in 1994 is now headed by Dr. Judith Beck, his daughter; there, she and others provide therapy and training.
EIGHTEEN
Users and Misusers
of Psychology
Knowledge Is Power
Whatever the phantom of Wilhelm Wundt might think of present-day clinical psychology, the flesh-and-blood Wundt was incensed at the sight of his science put to other disgracefully practical uses—and by some of his favorite students.
One of them, Ernst Meumann, committed what Wundt saw as apostasy, abandoning pure research in order to apply psychological principles to education. Even worse, two others hawked their knowledge to business and the public. In 1903 Walter Dill Scott, a professor at Northwestern University, published a book on the psychology of salesmanship and advertising, and in 1908 a prize pupil of Wundt’s, Hugo Münsterberg, whom William James brought over to be director of the psychology laboratory at Harvard, published a book on the psychology of courtroom testimony and in 1915 another on applications of psychology to everyday problems.
Münsterberg, although an archetypal German professor, reactionary in his social views (he vehemently maintained that woman’s place was in the home) and of formidable appearance (austere mien, pince-nez, jutting chin, a pointed guardsman’s mustache), had become a leading figure in American psychology. As such, he seems to have been ambivalent