Top 10 Most Influential Therapists (Nagging Questions Included)

Psychotherapy Networker magazine has just published its survey of the top 10 most influential therapists drawing from a sample of 2,598 responses (a 76% female, 91% white, mostly middle-aged U.S. sample). The question asked of the respondents: “Over the last 25 years, which figures have most influenced your practice?” Here's the top 10:

1. Carl Rogers
2. Aaron Beck
3. Salvador Minuchin
4. Irvin Yalom
5. Virginia Satir
6. Albert Ellis
7. Murray Bowen
8. Carl Jung
9. Milton Erickson
10. John Gottman

The surprising finding of this survey: Minuchin, Satir, and Bowen are all family therapists. Yet, only 0.4% of respondents identified themselves as Marriage and Family Therapists. The article explains it this way:

"The second most used model, after CBT, is marital and family systems (1,135 respondents and 49.8 percent), but half say they don't use MFT at all, and only .4 percent (about 9 people) identify themselves exclusively as MFT therapists. And yet, three of the most influential therapists named this time are Salvador Minuchin, Virginia Satir, and Murray Bowen—so why aren't there more MFT practitioners? Looking back, in 1982, when the family therapy movement could still claim some revolutionary fervor, the only actual family therapist listed in the top 10 most influential psychotherapists was Jay Haley (who was number 8). And only 2.6 percent of the respondents to that survey (11 individuals—admittedly from a small pool) said family therapy was their orientation. It seems likely then that while the family therapy revolution is now over—at least in all its doctrinal purity—the revolutionaries actually won, in that systems thinking has been incorporated by a broad swath of therapists all across the clinical spectrum."

That's a nice reframe on the part of the Networker. But here is my...

Nagging Question #1) Is their study based on a sample of Psychotherapy Networker readers? The article says that "we partnered with Dr. Joan Cook at Columbia University and her research project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health," but didn't describe if it was a nationally drawn sample from all the mental health disciplines, including MFTs. Tsk tsk!

Nagging Question #2) How did a research scientist (John Gottman) become one of the top 10 most influential therapists? Erm... he's a researcher, folks, not a therapist. Perhaps the Networker should re-title their article to read "Top 10 Most Influential Persons in Therapy". Okay, I'm being pedantic. I'll stop.

Read more here (quick! catch the article before the link dies). Nagging questions aside, their summaries of the top 10 are fun to flip through.
https://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/35301

Posted by Johnben on March 24, 2007 05:02 AM
https://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/35301