In an effort to generate innovative treatments, the National Institute of Mental Health has made translational research for alleviating mental illness a major funding priority. Although translational research is a powerful approach for moving basic science findings into novel treatments, it remains ambiguous and rarely implemented in psychology.…

Research determines ethnic match, service match, and cognitive match as structural components of cultural competence in psychotherapy. Three independent characteristics involving scientific mindedness, dynamic sizing skills, and culture-specific expertise are suggested as important ingredients of cultural competence. Contains 39 references. (MMU)

Although it is well established that psychotherapy is remarkably effective, the change process in psychotherapy is not well understood. Psychotherapy is compared with medicine and cultural healing practices to argue that critical aspects of psychotherapy involve human processes that are used in religious, spiritual, and cultural healing practices.…

A good deal is now known about the neural circuitry involved in how conditioned fear can augment a simple reflex (fear-potentiated startle). This involves visual or auditory as well as shock pathways that project via the thalamus and perirhinal or insular cortex to the basolateral amygdala (BLA). The BLA projects to the central (CeA) and medial…

Although effective treatments for many mental disorders have been developed, little research has been conducted to determine whether these interventions are effective in treating those from diverse backgrounds. Recent reports have suggested that ethnic minorities are less likely to receive quality health services and that they evidence worse …

Listed in this article are 13 general guidelines for ethical and effective psychotherapy with women. Each guideline is presented with a verbatim example drawn from complaints of respondents to the initial survey of the Task Force on Sex Bias and Sex Role Stereotyping in Psychotherapeutic Practice.

Four decades of research have delineated the need for improved psychotherapeutic opportunities for poor clients, yet psychotherapists remain contradictory in their stance regarding service to the poor. Despite periodic calls within the field to address the needs of poor people, evidence from the psychotherapeutic literature suggests that the poor…

This brief article presents a comment on "Psychological Treatments" by D. H. Barlow. In his article, Barlow pointed to the need "to solidify the identification of psychology as a health care profession" by changing the terminology of practice in the health care context from psychotherapy to psychological treatments and suggested that the only…

This paper presents comments on "Psychological treatments" by D. H. Barlow. Barlow proposed that we distinguish between the terms "treatment" and "psychotherapy." The author believes that not only is the distinction unnecessary, but that its implications could have negative consequences for the field of clinical psychology. It is the proposed…

Comments on "Psychotherapy, classism, and the poor: Conspicuous by their absence" by Laura Smith (see record 2005-11834-002). Smith suggested that social psychology theories might explain how a negative attitude toward the poor has reduced the interest of practitioners in poor patients. The current author was impressed by Smith's comments when …

Psychology has recently identified itself as a health care profession and codified this change in the bylaws of the American Psychological Association. Although psychologists make a number of contributions to the nation's health-and mental health-the most identifiable activity focuses on treating physical or psychological pathology with…

The aims in this article are to connect the conceptual structure of clinical psychological science to what the author believes to be the omnipresent principles of evolution, use the evolutionary model to create a deductively derived clinical theory and taxonomy, link the theory and taxonomy to comprehensive and integrated approaches to assessment,…

The research on positive psychotherapy outcome consistently indicates that the quality of the alliance is important across different models of psychotherapy (D. E. Orlinsky, M. H. Ronnestad, & U. Willutzki, 2004; B. E. Wampold, 2000). Social psychological research has documented how "unintentional bias" can produce barriers to university…

Personality psychology studies how psychological systems work together. Consequently, the field can act as a unifying resource for the broader discipline of psychology. Yet personality's current fieldwide organization promotes a fragmented view of the person, seen through such competing theories as the psychodynamic, trait, and humanistic. There…

In this article, the author responds to a set of comments on his original article, "Psychological Treatments." The author responds to each comment. Hal Arkowitz (2005) misread the proposed distinction between "psychological treatments" and "psychotherapy" by presuming that the author was implying that the former is evidence based and the latter is…