Pluralistic Criteria for Psychotherapy: An Alternative to Sectarianism, Anarchy, and Utopian Integration

In the present theoretically skeptical era, a need is felt for criteria to evaluate therapeutic constructs. However, all absolute criteria seem to be accepted only by adherents of the approach that endorses them. We propose that in our pluralistic era, a plurality of relative criteria can be used, instead of an absolute one, in a cumulative way. Thus, an intervention will be deemed right to the extent that it is seen as coherent and pragmatically valid from a variety of points of view, such as the patient’s, the professional community’s, and the general public’s. In a pluralistic age, variety of endorsement is a dominant value.