Toward an experimental clinical science: behavioral psychotherapy in the 1980s

Abstract

This period marks the arrival of rigor in behavioral treatment. It has now been definitively recognized that clinical behavioral psychotherapy is empirical and that it can stand on its own without having to borrow the respectability achieved by other fields. Like any science, behavioral psychotherapy is developing its own principles to address the specific problems of its domain. Being scientific, these principles must meet the requirements of testability, repeatability, and objectivity, which usually imply intersubject reliability.

When we call ourselves empirical clinical scientists, it is worth taking a look at how the meaning of the three components of our “label” has varied over the years. With regard to the empirical component, we presumably do not have in mind its earliest meaning, which denoted “a quack or unprincipled healer.” Our selective memory would prefer to recall that the term empirical derives from the Greek word for “experience,” which, in the 2nd century B.C., described the physician who opposed the metaphysical and medical theories elaborated by Galen that would dominate medicine for the next 1,500 years. In fact, the empiricists held the view that knowledge derives from observation and experience: they used treatments of demonstrable clinical validity without delving into further speculative mechanisms.