Premium
How valuable are psychotherapy experiments?: The idiographic problem
Author(s) -
Erwin Edward
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-4679(199912)55:12<1519::aid-jclp9>3.0.co;2-2
Subject(s) - nomothetic and idiographic , psychology , psychotherapist , value (mathematics) , cognitive psychology , social psychology , computer science , machine learning
The idiographic problem is said to arise because psychotherapy experiments study groups of subjects, whereas the clinician wants useful etiological or treatment information concerning a single, unique client. One response is to place little value on psychotherapy experiments and to argue for nonexperimental methods for obtaining clinical knowledge. It is argued here that these alternative methods are defective and that the idiographic problem can be solved without renouncing experimental methods. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 55: 1519–1530, 1999.