Yet the integration movement itself may be stalling, perhaps as a function of its own success. Integrationists realized that a taking a bit from this perspective and a bit of that technique quickly leads to chaos, and over the past several decades integrationists have tried to carve out pathways to pull together different strands of thought with integrity. This is why the eclecticism of the 1980s gave rise to psychotherapy integration movement of the 1990s. The unsystematic blending of ideas is a weak intellectual solution. To eclectically put them all together, they argue, yields a form of mush, something far less-not more-than the sum of its parts.
They will rightfully point out that the different perspectives are deeply anchored into fundamentally different visions of what it means to be human. Knowledgeable practitioners of the specific schools of thought will probably balk the suggestion of conceptual unification. We believe psychotherapy is on the cusp of such a transition, and the next several decades will bring a much more unified vision of the field. Philosophers of science talk about fields moving from a pre-paradigmatic state where competing schools advocate fundamentally different visions of reality to a paradigmatic state where a shared frame emerges that aligns the key insights into a coherent whole. Moreover, such an approach will more directly connect psychotherapy to the science of psychology.
Instead of yet another movement defined against those that have come before, what is desperately needed now is a systematic approach that provides a common language and conceptual framework that allows practitioners to see how the key insights from the major perspectives can go together to form a coherent whole. So, will there be another great wave in psychotherapy? Perhaps forms of Zen-based mindfulness? Brainwise therapies? Maybe something connected to the technological explosion? While these are exciting developments, we believe the next wave will be a different kind of wave one that will bring consolidation and clarification to the field.
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