Pursuing a unifying paradigm for psychotherapy: Tasks, dialectical considerations, and biopsychosocial systems metatheory.

This article focuses on salient issues and directions in pursuing a unifying paradigm for psychotherapy. This endeavor is placed in historical context, followed by discussion of the author’s definition of unification and of benefits that can accrue from this pursuit. Subsequently, attention is devoted to the core challenge of reconciling the quest for unity with the enormous, functionally invaluable plurality of knowledge elements deriving from the multiple paradigms guiding psychotherapy theory, research, and practice. Based on Staats (1991, 1999), three tasks necessary for addressing this tension are delineated: undertaking unifying theory analysis to reduce conceptual redundancy; developing bridging theory to unify divergencies, facilitated by dialectical thinking and formulation; and unifying research methodologies in psychotherapy. Discussion then turns to biopsychosocial systems metatheory as a framework for a unifying psychotherapeutic paradigm. In this context, the author examines interrelationship and process as fundamental unifying principles; insights from cybernetics, chaos theory, and their synthesis; and implications of the systems paradigm for unificationoriented scientific inquiry.