Psychological disorder and its treatment — diagnosis, the major therapeutic traditions, and the alliance predicting outcomes.
11 topics · 18 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
On Being Sane in Insane Places
David L. Rosenhan · 1973
Healthy volunteers who reported a single fake symptom to gain admission to psychiatric hospitals were then unable to get themselves declared sane,…
+4 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Effects of Psychotherapy: An Evaluation
Hans J. Eysenck · 1952
Compares recovery rates of treated and untreated neurotic patients and argues psychotherapy of the day produced no better outcome than spontaneous…
+5 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Generalizability of the Psychoanalytic Concept of the Working Alliance
Edward S. Bordin · 1979
Redefines the therapeutic alliance as three separable components - agreement on goals, agreement on tasks, and an emotional bond - and argues this…
+6 more at this level
12 of 18 works
David L. Rosenhan
Healthy volunteers who reported a single fake symptom to gain admission to psychiatric hospitals were then unable to get themselves declared sane, and staff systematically reinterpreted their normal behaviour as pathological, exposing how little psychiatric diagnosis at the time relied on the patient's actual behaviour once labelled.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Patrick W. Corrigan & Amy C. Watson
Distinguishes public stigma from self-stigma in mental illness and argues the two work through different mechanisms, so reducing discrimination and reducing a patient's own internalised shame call for different interventions.
link checked 17 Sept 2026National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
Recommends against long-term drug treatment for borderline personality disorder itself and argues structured psychological therapy, not medication, should be the primary treatment.
link checked 17 Sept 2026National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
Recommends trauma-focused CBT or EMDR as first-line treatment for PTSD in adults on the strength of a systematic review of trial evidence, and advises against routine single-session debriefing immediately after trauma.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Daniel David, Ioana Cristea & Stefan G. Hofmann
Argues CBT leads other therapies not because it is uniquely correct but because it has produced far more randomised controlled trials than any rival school, and cautions that this quantitative dominance is often mistaken for proof of a larger qualitative superiority than the evidence supports.
Hans J. Eysenck
Compares recovery rates of treated and untreated neurotic patients and argues psychotherapy of the day produced no better outcome than spontaneous remission, a challenge that forced the entire field to start measuring its own outcomes.
Mardi J. Horowitz, Nancy Wilner & William Alvarez
Introduces the Impact of Event Scale, arguing that intrusive re-experiencing and deliberate avoidance are two distinct, separately measurable components of the stress response following a traumatic event.
Steven C. Hayes, Jason B. Luoma, Frank W. Bond, Akihiko Masuda & Jason Lillis
Argues psychological suffering comes mainly from experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion, and that treatment should build acceptance and value-directed action rather than trying to eliminate unwanted thoughts and feelings.
Jonathan Shedler
Reviews controlled outcome studies to argue that psychodynamic therapy's effect sizes are as large as those of therapies more often labelled evidence-based, and that its benefits keep growing after treatment ends rather than fading.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Peter Fonagy
Reviews controlled trials since 2010 to argue psychodynamic therapy has accumulated an evidence base comparable to other bona fide treatments, while noting that most of that evidence comes from a small number of research groups.
Andrew T. Gloster, Noemi Walder, Michael E. Levin, Michael P. Twohig & Marcel Karekla
Reviews 20 meta-analyses covering over 12,000 participants to argue ACT is efficacious across anxiety, depression, substance use, pain and transdiagnostic groups, while noting many of the underlying trials are still small and short-term.
Edward S. Bordin
Redefines the therapeutic alliance as three separable components - agreement on goals, agreement on tasks, and an emotional bond - and argues this pantheoretical structure applies across every school of therapy, not just psychoanalysis.