Psychotherapy and Eclecticism: I stumbles onto this site from Google news, and there were a couple of interesting articles.
Moreover, no one is really ‘knowledgeable’ about how best to combine differing treatments. Little evidence is available with which to inform eclecticism. Hence, although mixing techniques is a constant temptation in therapy sessions, it is best avoided. The risk inherent in eclecticism is that therapists will fall into idiosyncratic approaches, as they did in the pre-empirical past. It’s important that psychiatric residents be trained in carefully defined treatments (psychodynamic, cognitive, and so forth) so that such eclecticisma euphemism for entropyis minimized.
John C. Markowitz, M.D.
In my own psychotherapy journey I went from an eclectic start to a very focussed & pure psychodrama stage… have I lost that to eclecticism as I have learnt more about Jung and analytical practitioners? My approach is not so much eclectic as a comfortable old hours which retains it character but has had some efficient modifications well incorporated all in keeping with its original style. Of course I would challenge his whole notion of pre and post empirical times. The past was quite empirical, perhaps more thasn he thinks, and the present is not as empirical as it might seem, and anyway empirical is not really the right word.
Still his point about the muddied eclecticism makes sense, though it might not really include what happans in the post purity stage in the case of experienced clinicians.