The future of psychotherapy integration

We offer our thoughts about the future of psychotherapy in general, and psychotherapy integration in particular. We expect that psychotherapy in general will witness a consolidation of more traditional orientations; be more open toward other approaches; focus on interventions for specific clinical problems; apply findings from cognitive science; and integrate psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. We believe that common and unique change processes across orientations will be delineated and the effectiveness of integrative interventions will be empirically demonstrated. Although integrative psychotherapy is unlikely to provide a grand theoretical synthesis, it nonetheless can help the field to achieve a consensus on integrative strategies for certain clinical problems, foster a dialogue in a theoretically neutral language, and encourage cross-fertilization in studying the process of change.