And the paradox of divergence among their followers
In psychotherapy, there exists an intriguing phenomenon. It refers to the observation that the founders of the great therapeutic schools — Freud, Jung, Rogers, Perls, Frankl, and others — despite having created theories that clearly distinguish them from one another, share at their core remarkably similar views about the human psyche and the factors that lead to its healing.
By contrast, once these schools become institutionalized, their followers tend to grow dogmatic, engaging in disputes to defend methods and identities. Instead of moving from the creative impulse that once inspired their teachers, they begin to fight what could be called “ethnic wars” among themselves.
- The first tendency is known as the effect of convergence among the founders, and the second — the paradox of divergence among their followers.
This article explores that phenomenon in greater depth, driven by my conviction that the true healing factor in psychotherapy lies not in the method itself but within the inner world of the therapist. In exploring this topic, I engaged in an extended dialogue with an AI system whose analytical synthesis helped map the historical development of the idea.
Frederick Fiedler: The most effective therapists
from different schools resemble each other more than their less skilled colleagues within the same school
I first came across the idea of convergence and divergence in psychotherapy during my time as a research fellow at the Institute of Psychology of the Ministry of Interior. In its library, I found Claudio Naranjo’s book “Gestalt Therapy: The Attitude and Practice of Atheoretical Empiricism,” which deeply impressed me. I still keep my notes from that period; from the page 28 of this book I had written down the following passage:
“The classical modern studies by Fiedler on the nature of the therapeutic relationship became a very important milestone, showing that highly skilled specialists from different schools are in many respects more similar to one another than to less qualified specialists within their own schools — both in their conceptions of the ideal therapeutic relationship and in their actual behavior during sessions.
The only explanation Fiedler could give for this phenomenon was the understanding of the patient by the therapist.”
Roughly twenty-five years later, I searched for more information about Fiedler’s research:
In the late 1940s and 1950s, Frederick Fiedler conducted a series of studies on the structure of the psychotherapeutic relationship. These studies became foundational because, for the first time, they raised the question of whether therapeutic effectiveness depends more on the method or on the therapist themselves.
Fiedler analyzed transcripts and observations of sessions from various traditions — psychoanalytic, Rogerian (client-centered), and Adlerian. He asked independent evaluators to assess (1) the quality of the therapeutic relationship, (2) the degree of understanding and empathy shown by the therapist, and (3) the change in the client over time.
The results were striking: the most successful therapists, regardless of school, behaved in similar ways, while the less successful ones, even within the same school, differed widely. This indicated that the therapist’s personality and the quality of the relationship were the decisive factors in healing — not the theoretical model they followed. ∗
The “Dodo Verdict” and the theory of common Factors
Before Fiedler, the question of what truly makes psychotherapy healing had already been posed by Saul Rosenzweig, who introduced one of the most enduring metaphors in the field. As early as 1936, psychologist Saul Rosenzweig published a paper titled “Some Implicit Common Factors in Diverse Methods of Psychotherapy.”
In it, he suggested that all therapeutic methods work through shared mechanisms — not through their specific techniques, but through the universal human elements they have in common: hope, trust, and emotional engagement. To illustrate this, Rosenzweig borrowed a line from Alice in Wonderland, spoken by the Dodo:
“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”
This image became famous as “the Dodo verdict” — a metaphor suggesting that all psychotherapies can be equally effective, because they share the same human foundation. I really like this metaphor, even though I don’t find it entirely accurate.
As later research has shown, the “prize” is not for everyone, but only for those who embody certain inner qualities — empathy and genuine engagement, faith in the meaning of the therapeutic process, the ability to create a relationship of trust, flexibility in approach, and the capacity to awaken hope and motivation for change.
It is precisely these qualities — rather than any particular technique or school — that later came to be described as the “common factors” through which different therapies achieve healing effects.
From understanding to universality: Jerome Frank, Hans Strupp, and Bruce Wampold
After Fiedler’s empirical work, the idea of universal healing principles found its first coherent theoretical form in the writings of Jerome Frank. In his classic book Persuasion and Healing (1961), Frank proposed one of the earliest systematic explanations of psychotherapy as a process rooted in mechanisms that are universal across cultures and healing traditions. He identified four essential elements that must be present in any effective therapeutic system:
(1) a trusting relationship between therapist and patient;
(2) a meaningful framework that gives structure to the experience;
(3) an explanatory model that makes suffering intelligible; and
(4) a ritual of change that transforms hope into action.
In this sense, Frank lifted psychotherapy beyond the boundaries of any single school and placed it within the broader context of the human search for meaning and transformation. His insight suggested that healing is not a product of theoretical allegiance but a re-enactment of an ancient pattern — a pattern of trust, symbol, and renewal that repeats itself in every culture where humans have sought relief from suffering.
This line of thought was expanded through the work of Hans Strupp, who brought an empirical focus to Frank’s universalism. Strupp emphasized the quality of the interpersonal relationship as the carrier of therapeutic change. According to his research, the success of therapy depends less on the specific method and far more on the therapist’s ability to be authentically present and to create a genuine encounter in which the client feels seen, met, and understood.
Strupp’s work paved the way for Bruce Wampold, who, at the turn of the twenty-first century, formulated what became known as the Contextual Model of Psychotherapy.
Wampold demonstrated through extensive meta-analyses that the differences in outcome between therapeutic methods account for only a small portion of the variance in results.
Instead, the relationship, the mutual trust, and the shared effort toward change consistently emerge as the true constants of healing.
Thus, from Rosenzweig’s “Dodo verdict” through Fiedler’s relational studies and Frank’s universal model, a profound conclusion takes shape: psychotherapy works not because of its methods, but because of the human connection that animates them.
The proliferation of methods: divergence and the expansion of psychotherapy
From the time Saul Rosenzweig first formulated his “Dodo verdict” to the present day, the number of distinct psychotherapeutic schools has grown at an astonishing rate. In the late 1930s, when Rosenzweig wrote that “there is no therapeutic school without its own cases of success,” the field was still small enough to count on one’s fingers.
At that time, psychotherapy comprised only a handful of main traditions: psychoanalysis, Adlerian therapy, Jungian analysis, hypnosuggestion, and a few religious or pastoral counseling approaches. Yet even then, Rosenzweig noticed that every school was already constructing its own myth of healing — its narrative about how change occurs, and why its particular method was the key.
By the early 1950s, when Frederick Fiedler published his studies, this landscape had already begun to shift. New directions had appeared: client-centered therapy, psychodrama, group and behavioral therapies, and the first versions of family and systemic approaches.
At the same time, the existential–humanistic movement was emerging, marking what would later be called the “third force” in psychology — a philosophical turn toward freedom, meaning, and the uniqueness of the individual. This period signaled a transition from the classical analytic era to a modern age of competing paradigms, each offering its own vision of the psyche.
By the mid-1960s, the diversification had accelerated dramatically. In 1966, researchers identified 36 distinct systems of psychotherapy. By 1980, that number had risen to over 130.
Among the new arrivals were Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy, Albert Ellis’s Rational–Emotive Therapy, Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, Bandler and Grinder’s Neuro–Linguistic Programming, as well as a wide range of brief and strategic therapies inspired by Milton Erickson and Jay Haley.
This explosion of methods made the 1970s the era of maximum divergence in the history of psychotherapy — a time when theoretical fragmentation reached its peak. And yet, paradoxically, it was also during this same decade that the first conscious efforts toward integration began to take shape. Behind the growing multiplicity of techniques, a deeper longing emerged: the desire to rediscover the shared principles that underlie all true healing.
The 1980s: The birth of the integrative Idea
By the late 1970s, a new question began to stir within the professional community: If so many therapies claim success, might they all be touching the same underlying truth?
In 1977, Paul Wachtel published his influential book Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy: Toward an Integration. Its central idea was simple yet revolutionary — that the psychoanalytic and behavioral traditions, long viewed as irreconcilable, could in fact be seen as complementary perspectives on human suffering and change. This notion of complementarity extended Fiedler’s earlier insight about convergence, giving it a theoretical and practical framework.
Throughout the 1980s, this integrative impulse gained form and structure. In 1983, the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) was founded by John Norcross and Marvin Goldfried, bringing together professionals from diverse schools who shared a new focus: not on the differences between methods, but on the principles that make them effective. Within this emerging movement, three main pathways of integration took shape:
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Theoretical Integration — an attempt to combine different conceptual models into a unified framework (Wachtel; Safran & Muran).
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Technical Eclecticism — the flexible use of techniques drawn from multiple approaches (Lazarus).
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The Common Factors Model — the search for the universal healing elements present in all successful therapies (Frank, Strupp, Lambert).
In this context, a new generation of meta-analyses began to appear, confirming that the success of psychotherapy depends far less on the specific method used, and far more on the quality of the relationship, the faith in the process, and the meaningful context it creates. Thus, the convergence that Fiedler had spoken of in the 1950s was no longer just a metaphor, but an empirical phenomenon, supported by growing evidence from research.
The 1980s, therefore, marked a subtle but profound shift: psychotherapy was beginning to turn its gaze inward — from competing systems toward the shared essence that animates them all.
The 1990-s: From theories to data
The 1990s marked a turning point — the decade in which psychotherapy shifted from the era of theories to the era of data. It was a time of growing self-reflection in the field, when therapists began to ask not only “Which method works best?” but the more fundamental question: “Do all these therapies really work, and if so — why?”
After the storm of theoretical divergence in the 1960s through the 1980s, the 1990s brought a collective need for verification. Psychotherapy started to adopt statistical and empirical tools previously reserved for medicine and the natural sciences. Out of this transformation emerged the movement known as Empirically Supported Treatments (ESTs), formally introduced by the American Psychological Association, Division 12, in 1995.
This period was not simply about measuring effectiveness — it was about redefining what “effectiveness” actually means. In 1992, Michael Lambert published a now-classic analysis in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. He proposed that the overall outcome of psychotherapy depends approximately:
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40% on extratherapeutic factors — the client’s personality, life context, and social support;
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30% on the therapeutic relationship and other common factors;
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15% on expectancy and placebo effects;
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and only 15% on specific techniques.
Lambert’s findings revolutionized the field. They suggested that what truly heals is not the chosen method, but the human variables that surround and sustain it. Building upon this, Bruce Wampold developed his Contextual Model (1997–2001), based on large-scale statistical meta-analyses.
He demonstrated that the differences between therapeutic schools are minimal once the quality of the therapeutic relationship is taken into account. In other words, psychotherapy works best when it is a shared endeavor — when therapist and client trust the process they are co-creating.
By 1992, there were already more than 450 distinct psychotherapeutic approaches — a number that reflected not confusion, but creativity. Each new model attempted to refine, contextualize, or integrate what came before. Yet, behind this proliferation, one truth remained constant: the power of human understanding transcends the boundaries of any single method.
The turn of the century to the present: The era of meta-integration
After the 1990s, psychotherapy entered a new stage — not merely a phase of proving, but of understanding. Once it became clear that no single school holds a monopoly on transformation, the focus began to shift from method to process. At the dawn of the new millennium, the integrative perspective was no longer peripheral; it had become the dominant paradigm.
The Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (Norcross & Goldfried, 2005) affirmed a new view: psychotherapy is not a collection of techniques but an art of mutual understanding — a living dialogue between two subjectivities rather than the application of a fixed method.
During this period, new movements emerged that blended cognitive science with mindfulness and compassion-based approaches — among them the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Each sought to transcend the rigid cognitive-behavioral model, reintroducing awareness, compassion, and contextual meaning as central healing principles.
As the next decade unfolded, this integrative movement evolved further into process-based thinking. The Process-Based Therapy model (Hofmann & Hayes, 2020) invited the field to abandon the idea of closed “boxes” of therapy and instead focus on the universal mechanisms of change — flexibility, regulation, connectedness, and meaning. In this framework, the therapist is no longer merely a representative of a school but a researcher of living processes, facilitating growth wherever it naturally arises. This movement gave rise to what many now call the era of meta-integration.
Contemporary meta-analyses (Wampold, 2015; Cuijpers, 2021) consistently confirm that the differences between individual approaches are statistically insignificant, while the strength of the common processes — empathy, hope, meaning, compassion — remains decisive. Increasingly, the conversation in psychotherapy circles revolves around process-based, contextual, and pluralistic models — not as compromises, but as expressions of a more mature understanding of the human psyche.
And yet, there is a subtle irony in this development. The very trends that seek to unify the field — the new integrative therapies — also continue to multiply it. Each new synthesis adds another name to the list. Reading through them — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy — one can feel the mind grow slightly hazy, as if the ever-expanding taxonomy itself were a mirror of our collective search for wholeness.
In truth, perhaps the only place where integration and differentiation can finally meet is in the psyche of the healer.
Today, the most balanced assessment suggests that there exist hundreds — perhaps over 500 — distinct psychotherapies, with some historical overviews estimating more than a thousand named variants.
The exact number is elusive: many models are hybrids, local adaptations, or conceptual re-framings of what, at heart, may be the same human process of understanding and transformation.
At the ‘higher level,’ the religions resemble one another as well
The deeper I delved into this material, the more I realized that the idea of convergence among the founders of psychotherapy mirrors a much older pattern — one that has shaped the history of religion and culture alike. Returning to Claudio Naranjo and his book, on that same page 28 he writes:
“The experimental confirmation of the convergence of psychotherapeutic systems at a higher level of understanding echoes the growing recognition of another fact — that at this ‘higher level,’ religions also resemble one another.”
At the lower level of understanding, the individual expressions of the One lose contact with their source. The great Abrahamic religions — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — have waged crusades and fratricidal wars when institutionalized at their periphery. But at the higher level, preserved within their mystical traditions — Christian hesychasm, Jewish Kabbalah, Islamic Sufism — the living connection with the Divine remains intact.
At that level, there is no hostility, for they know that God is the One with many names.
As Rumi wrote:
“What can I do, O Muslims? I do not know myself.
I am not a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Magian, nor a Muslim…”
These words by Rumi remind me of another mystic who agreed that he, too, was “such,” if mysticism is understood as the living, immediate experience of knowing the archetypes. That mystic was Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology.
“Thank God I am Jung and not a Jungian”
This remark, made by an evidently irritated Jung during a meeting with his students, is recorded in Barbara Hannah’s biography of him. (Hannah, Barbara. Jung: His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir, Page 78) It seems that Jung suffered from the very idea that his teaching might turn into a dogma once it became institutionalized. The passion at the heart of his teaching is creativity — the courage to walk untrodden paths, to become oneself.
If Jung himself refused to become a “Jungian,” what irony it is for his students to build their identity by that name!
He once wrote:
“An ancient adept has said: ‘If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.’ Unfortunately, this Chinese saying is only too true, and it sharply contrasts with our belief in the ‘right’ method regardless of the man who applies it. In reality, everything depends on the man and little or nothing on the method.”
(C.G. Jung, Collected Works, vol. 16)
This statement encapsulates the essence of what all the studies and theories have been circling around: the true locus of healing lies not in the method, but in the person. The more skillful the therapist becomes, the more they return to the common source from which all schools once sprang — understanding.
And true understanding is not born from the intellect alone; it arises from lived experience, from the alchemy of one’s own suffering and transformation.
Over the years, I have read many books, explored different therapeutic modalities, and seen how often the distinctions between them dissolve into nuances of language. Sometimes, it is as though each founder had discovered a different part of the same elephant in the dark room — yet the elephant remains one.
If we wish not to drown in the ocean of psychological theories, we must return to the living waters from which the great founders drank — the well of direct experience. We must become vessels for that water ourselves, knowing that we can be agents of another’s transformation only to the extent that we have lived it within our own being.
The place of union is within the human being
To understand duality, we must recognize the equal necessity of both movements: divergence — the creative unfolding of individuality — and convergence — the return to unity. The first gives birth to multiplicity and innovation; the second reconnects us with the Source.
Jung called the process of reconciling these opposites individuation — the realization that the only true place where opposites are united is within ourselves. In the profession of psychotherapy, this means standing upon tradition while daring to walk one’s own untrodden path; listening to many voices yet speaking with one’s own; finding the remedy for one’s wound, for it is there that one’s unique healing power is born.
Integration is not achieved by naming a new “integrative” or “holistic” method. It happens only when the unifying center is found within the person. Otherwise, these terms remain verbal shells — beautiful, but empty. To see the essence, one must distill personal experience, extracting from life’s pain its healing essence.
When we manage to do this, we ourselves become the essence. And the wound at the heart of all human beings is one and the same — the pain of incarnation into a dual world.
The deeper we go into that wound, the more universal it becomes. When we suffer, we suffer in the same way as billions of others — and it is precisely there, in shared humanity, that healing begins. As Jung said — and as the entire history of psychotherapy confirms —
“In reality, everything depends on the person, and little or nothing on the method.”
All that has been said above exists merely to make that truth more deeply understood.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Sources and References
Wachtel, Paul.
“Therapeutic Communication.” General commentary from Paul Wachtel on the tribalization of psychotherapeutic schools.
Fiedler, Frederick E.
Fiedler, F. E. (1950). A Comparison of Therapeutic Relationships in Psychoanalytic, Nondirective, and Adlerian Therapy. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 14(6), 436–445.
Fiedler, F. E. (1953). The Relationship of Interpersonal Perception to Therapy Outcome. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 17(2), 115–119.
Rosenzweig, Saul.
Rosenzweig, S. (1936). Some Implicit Common Factors in Diverse Methods of Psychotherapy. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 6(3), 412–415.
(Includes the original reference to Lewis Carroll’s Dodo verdict.)
Corsini, Raymond J., & Wedding, Danny (Eds.).
Current Psychotherapies. F.E. Peacock Publishers, 4th ed. (1989; 1995).
Statistical overview of therapeutic systems through the late 20th century.
Norcross, John C., & Goldfried, Marvin R. (Eds.).
Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Foundational work on integrative and common-factors models.
Scientific American (2016).
“Are All Psychotherapies Created Equal?”
Overview indicating the existence of at least 500 distinct psychotherapies, many representing variations of core models.
APA (American Psychological Association), Division 29 (2023).
General classification of psychotherapy into five major families: psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic-experiential, systemic, and integrative.
Jung, Carl Gustav.
Hannah, Barbara. (1976). Jung: His Life and Work — A Biographical Memoir. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
McGuire, W., & Hull, R. F. C. (Eds.). (1977). C. G. Jung Speaking. Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. Collected Works, Vol. 13, par. 424 (The Secret of the Golden Flower).
Jung, C. G. Letters, Vol. 2, p. 619 (the statement on “-isms”).
∗ Note on Methodological Transparency : The historical synthesis and part of the literature review were developed with the assistance of OpenAI’s GPT-5. All interpretations, conclusions, and philosophical reflections are the author’s own.
