Abstract
The place of modern process-oriented psychotherapies within an academic psychology and larger society that emphasize an outcome orientation is considered. The defining characteristics of process therapies are reviewed within the context of the uneasy fit between subjective and clinically derived theories and methods and an empirically focused, objective-oriented scientific discipline. The social and cultural pressures that impact on psychotherapy also are considered. Responses to the objections and demands of society and academic psychology by practitioners and scholars with a process orientation are reviewed as evidence of a growing rapprochement between the two positions and of the value of an integration of the best of both.