A Paradigm for Modern Functional Eclecticism

Abstract

Theories are used to explain well-defined sets of observations and experimental results and to organize subtheories. The field of psychotherapy and counseling is too underdeveloped for comprehensive theory building. The so-called big theories in the field are not really used as theories in the same way that the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology develop and use theories. Therapy theories (such as psychoanalytic theory and cognitive behaviorism) are more accurately described as orientations or paradigms rather than explanatory theories. The function of an orientation is to define what questions, phenomena, methods are important (and indirectly to define what can be ignored.) But the statement “this is important, this needs to be observed and explained” is not the same as a complete theoretical explanation. Freud’s theory of repression, for example, is not a theory; it is a statement saying “something called repression exists and is important for clinical work, here are some ways to observe its manifestations and some partial explanations.” Scholars have shown that Freud actually offers half a dozen or more different definitions and explanations of repression (Mackinnon & Dukes, 1964; Madison, 1961). Psychoanalysis stands out from other therapeutic orientations not because it offers a satisfactory theoretical explanation of repression but because analysts say such an explanation is necessary. A paradigm or orientation is like a choice of directions to explore, some explorers want to go west, some southwest, some north, and so on. Actual theories are the master maps of numerous explorations in which the similarities and differences between repeated observations of the same terrain are reconciled.