BEHAVIOR-THERAPY AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE - COMMENT

G. T. Wilson (1997) describes how behavior therapy altered the field o f psychotherapy by dominating controlled outcome research in Europe an d in the United States, and by relating clinical science to clinical p ractice. Wilson maintains that behavior therapy has grown with continu ed scientific advances in experimental psychology, and concludes that the relation between behavior therapy and scientific formulations has, in fact, contributed to behavior therapy's record of success. In this commentary, we expand upon Wilson's points by relating the success of the behavior therapy movement with features of the evolutionary and p roblem-focused philosophy of science espoused by Laudan (1977). We con clude that behavior therapy's commitment to maximize problem-solving e ffectiveness accounts for its success in the domain of clinical scienc e.