Psychotherapy Integration via Theoretical Unification

Abstract

Meaningful psychotherapy integration requires theoretical unification because psychotherapists can only be expected to treat patients with the same diagnoses similarly if they understand these disorders similarly and if they agree on the mechanisms by which effective treatments work. Tryon (in press) has proposed a transtheoretic transdiagnostic psychotherapy based on an Applied Psychological Science (APS) clinical orientation, founded on a BioPsychology Network explanatory system that provides sufficient theoretical unification to support meaningful psychotherapy integration. That proposal focused mainly on making a neuroscience argument. This article makes a different argument for theoretical unification and consequently psychotherapy integration. The strength of theories of psychotherapy, like all theory, is to focus on certain topics, goals, and methods. But this strength is also a weakness because it can blind one to alternative perspectives and thereby promote unnecessary competition among therapies. This article provides a broader perspective based on learning and memory that is consistent with the behavioral, cognitive, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, pharmacologic, and Existential/Humanistic/Experiential clinical orientations. It thereby provides a basis for meaningful psychotherapy integration.

Keywords

• clinical orientations
• theoretical unification
• psychotherapy integration