Originally published: . Volume 9, No. 3. Source pages: 12, 13.
What’s Recommended?
2nd Edition Guilford, 2015 Edited by Scott O. Lilienfeld Steven Jay Lynn Jeffrey M. Lohr
In Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues have put together a set of ideas and facts for understanding what are science-based methods in clinical psychology and what are not. This edited text lays out the good and the bad for us, and also helps to boil down the reasons why we clinicians can be so confused about what is evidence-based and what is folklore, belief, or imagination when it comes to clinical psychology.
Science and Pseudoscience has something for everyone to feel bad about—readers will find at least one or two of their treasured theories or methods included somewhere in a chapter’s section on “Unproven or Controversial” descriptions, or embedded in the discussion of critical thinking using the template of science.
The straightforward benefit for the reader, especially for those who have been away from their scientific training or approach, is this––a bolstering of scientific and logical thinking and practice. Reminders of where we need to double-check ourselves, where we need to apply stronger reasoning and tighten it all down. How to shore up our pursuit of scientific truth.
Included are reviews on the Rorschach, projective drawings, the Myers-Briggs, the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder, New Age Therapies, memory recovery techniques, herbal treatments, Alcoholics Anonymous, as examples. Some well-known names are included in the contributors, especially Irving Kirsch and Elizabeth Loftus.
The work is organized in five parts, covering Part I: Controversies in Assessment and Diagnosis, Part II: Overarching Controversies in Psychological Treatment; Part III: Controversies in the Treatment of Adult Disorders; Part IV: Controversies in the Treatment of Child and Adolescent Disorders.
This second edition is well organized and takes the reader through the steps of honest assessment of the field, with chapters that point out what we’re doing wrong but also chapters that show us why. Among the many strong sections, authors provide an excellent overview of how to understand the types of research information for assessing evidence––the introductory chapter for Part II, “The Science of Psychotherapy: Developing, Testing, and Promoting Evidence-Based Treatments.”
Many readers might also find a particular value in the chapter on self-help therapy and the authors’ “Guide for Developing, Selecting, or Evaluating a Self-Help Program: Questions to Ask,” which struck me as very useful.
The chapter on stress and trauma sets out the distinctions between evidence and science–based treatments, and critical reviews of EMDR and critical incident stress debriefing, then moving into the solid treatments like prolonged exposure.
A pull-no-punches Forward by Carol Tavris should not be missed. She describes a clueless clinician testifying in court, who was unaware of the reliability and validity weaknesses in her tests, knew nothing about testing clinical assumptions, nothing about confirmation bias, nothing about error rates, and so on. “In short, Dr. M managed to get a PhD in clinical psychology without having acquired a core understanding of the basic principles of scientific thinking.”
Lilienfeld has been beating this drum for a while. He is one of the leading professional voices in helping to straighten out scientific clinical psychology and he has assembled an impressive group of contributors to walk the reader through key areas of practice, outlining the science and pseudoscience.
A growing minority of clinicians are basing their work in therapy and assessment on subjective intuition, Lilienfeld says, rather than research evidence and this results in an ever increasing scientist-practitioner gap. And, he believes an increasing number are skeptical even for the need of evidence-based practice.
Lilienfeld quotes one of his mentors, Paul Meehl, on the topic, “It is absurd, as well as arrogant, to pretend that acquiring a Ph.D. somehow immunizes me from the errors of sampling, perception, recording, retention, retrieval, and inference to which the human mind is subject.”
The passion of the true scientist is to not be fooled or to fool anyone else, Meehl says, following Bertrand Russell. The true scientist is to ask “What do you mean?” and “How do you know?” He said, “I see the disturbing signs that this is happening and I predict that, if we do not clean up our clinical act and provide our students with role models of scientific thinking, outsiders will do it for us.”
Science and Pseudoscience is a commendable effort to help with that goal. It can supply a check to one’s metacognitive approach, to help psychologists accurately evaluate what they are doing and why, and to apply the tools of science to their methods, and to help them think about how they are thinking. You might not come away with a single change (although I doubt it) but you will come away with a renewed awareness to being a real psychologist.
Dr. Lilienfeld will be delivering the keynote address at the Louisiana Psychological Association in May.
TABLE of CONTENTS
1. Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology: Initial Thoughts, Reflections, and Considerations, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, & Jeffrey M. Lohr
I. Controversies in Assessment and Diagnosis
2. Understanding Why Some Clinicians Use Pseudoscientific Methods: Findings from Research on Clinical Judgment, Howard N. Garb & Patricia A. Boyle
3. Controversial and Questionable Assessment Techniques, John Hunsley, Catherine M. Lee, James M. Wood, & Whitney Taylor
4. The Science and Pseudoscience of Expert Testimony, Joseph T. McCann, Steven Jay Lynn, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Kelley L. Shindler, & Tammy R. Hammond
5. Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Contemporary Scientific Perspective, Scott O. Lilienfeld & Steven Jay Lynn
II. Overarching Controversies in Psychological Treatment
6. The Science of Psychotherapy: Developing, Testing, and Promoting Evidence-Based Treatments, Brandon A. Gaudiano, Kristy L. Dalrymple, Lauren M. Weinstock, & Jeffrey M. Lohr
7. New Age and Related Novel Unsupported Therapies in Mental Health Practice, Monica Pignotti & Bruce A. Thyer
8. The Remembrance of Things Past: Problematic Memory Recovery Techniques in Psychotherapy, Steven Jay Lynn, Elisa Krackow, Elizabeth F. Loftus, Timothy G. Locke, & Scott O. Lilienfeld
9. Self-Help Therapy: Recent Developments in the Science and Business of Giving Psychology Away, Gerald M. Rosen, Russell E. Glasgow, Timothy E. Moore, & Manuel Barrera Jr.
III. Controversies in the Treatment of Adult Disorders 10. Science- and Non-Science-Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Stress Disorders, Jeffrey M. Lohr, Richard Gist, Brett Deacon, Grant J. Devilly, & Tracey Varker
11. Controversial Treatments for Alcohol Use Disorders, James MacKillop & Joshua Gray
12. Herbal Treatments and Antidepressant Medication: Similar Data, Divergent Conclusions, Harald Walach & Irving Kirsch
IV. Controversies in the Treatment of Child and Adolescent Disorders
13. Empirically Supported, Promising, and Unsupported Treatments for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Daniel A. Waschbusch & James G. Waxmonsky
14. The Status of Treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Weak Relationship of Science to Interventions, Raymond G. Romanczyk, Laura B. Turner, Melina Sevlever, & Jennifer M. Gillis
15. Attachment Therapy, Jean Mercer
16. Antisocial Behavior of Children and Adolescents: Harmful Treatments, Effective Interventions, and Novel Strategies, Anthony Petrosino, Pamela MacDougall, Meghan E. Hollis-Peel, Trevor A. Fronius, & Sarah Guckenberg
Conclusions and Future Directions
17. Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology: Concluding Thoughts and Constructive Remedies, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, & Jeffrey M. Lohr
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.