MANUALIZED BEHAVIOR-THERAPY - MERITS AND CHALLENGES

Treatment manuals have been hailed as an important breakthrough in the development, evaluation, and dissemination of empirically validated t herapies. Yet manualized behavior therapy has also been criticized bec ause (a) practice involves the application of validated principles of behavior rather than the application of fixed strategies, and (b) succ essful behavioral interventions must supposedly be based on an idiogra phic functional problem analysis and tailored to each individual patie nt. This article evaluates the relative merits, potential limitations, and misconceptions about the use of manuals. We conclude that individ ualizing treatment and manual use are not mutually exclusive and propo se that manuals be used in a flexible theory-driven fashion guided by empirically tested clinical decision rules.