Why Do Therapists Get Attracted to New Therapies? Why Do Particular Therapies Become Movements?
Answers from a study of how EMDR came to be the dominant treatment for PTSD in one VA medical center, but not another
Breakfast of champions, Alisdair McDiarmid from Glasgow, United Kingdom, Wikimedia
I am quite skeptical that therapists adopt new therapies on the basis of strength of evidence. I have actually come to believe that evidence is only a weak influence, and particularly so, given that chances are small that one structured therapy really differ markedly from another in efficacy, except under special conditions. I am hard pressed to find examples of a new therapy being introduced that has a clinically significant advantage over existing therapies, despite the claims to the contrary.
I think that to take hold, novel therapies need to meet significant therapist personal and social needs. Their ability to do so depends a lot on emergence of a champion to promote the therapy with great passion and conviction. Therapy movements are often tribal, if not cultish.
Maybe we need to build opportunities for therapists to personally test therapies on themselves and see the results into our dissemination o…