Family therapy—professional endeavour or successful religion?

When I began my psychiatric training some 30 years ago, it was taken as read that the only definitively curative therapy for major psychiatric disorders was long term psychoanalysis--which required extended professional training to perform. About the same time, however, challenges to this supremacy began to appear in the form of pharmaco-, behaviour and family therapy. It is of interest then, to compare the current status of these four therapies 30 years on.