Over 70 years ago, a British psychologist named Hans Eysenck shocked the world of psychotherapy by claiming that psychotherapy was no more effective than doing nothing at all. He had surveyed the reports of improvement for over 7,000 patients receiving psychotherapy, and had found that those patients did no better than similar patients receiving no psychotherapy. His results were highly controversial of course, but they spurred psychologists to look for better approaches to psychotherapy.
In the 70+ years since Eysenck first published those results, new approaches to psychotherapy have been developed and shown to be effective compared to no treatment and even to older forms of treatment. Among the most effective treatments today are several cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies. But the effort to find new and better approaches all began with Eysenck and his 1952 paper.
Abstract
A survey was made of reports on the improvement of neurotic patients after psychotherapy, and the results compared with the best available estimates of recovery without benefit of such therapy. The figures fail to support the hypothesis that psychotherapy facilitates recovery from neurotic disorder. In view of the many difficulties attending such actuarial comparisons, no further conclusions could be derived from the data whose shortcomings highlight the necessity of properly planned and executed experimental studies into this important field.
Citation
Eysenck, H. J. (1952). The effects of psychotherapy: an evaluation. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 16(5), 319–324.
Dr Martin Fracker 