Although the gap between psychotherapy practice and research has been present for some time, recent pressures for accountability from outside the system-managed health care and biological psychiatry-necessitate that we take steps to close this gap. One such step has been for psychotherapy researchers to specify a list of empirically validated therapies. However, as researchers who also have a strong allegiance to clinical practice, we are concerned that the conceptual and methodological constraints associated with outcome research may become clinical constraints for the practicing therapist. We firmly believe that, more than ever before, the time is ripe for us to develop a new outcome research paradigm that involves an active collaboration between researcher and practicing clinician.

Despite the advances in psychotherapy outcome research, findings are limited because they do not fully generalize to the way therapy is conducted in the real world. Research's clinical validity has been compromised by the medicalization of outcome research, use of random assignment of clients without regard to appropriateness of treatment, fixed number of therapy sessions, nature of the therapy manuals, and use of theoretically pure therapies. The field needs to foster a more productive collaboration between clinician and researcher; study theoretically integrated interventions; use process research findings to improve therapy manuals; make greater use of replicated clinical case studies; focus on less heterogeneous, dimensionalized clinical problems; and find a better way of disseminating research findings to the practicing clinician.

Although the trend toward psychotherapy integration and eclecticism has gathered momentum, research on eclectic approaches to psychotherapy has lagged behind. To address this gap, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) held a 2-day workshop in March 1986 on psychotherapy integration. Fourteen psychotherapy researchers were invited to consider the key issues associated with psychotherapy integration in order to advise the NIMH on guidelines for launching a program to stimulate relevant empirical research. Recommendations were developed to initiate such a research program that encompassed (a) conceptual clarification, (b) efficacy studies of systematic eclectic therapies, (c) the role of traditional psychotherapy process research, and (d) the training of integrative or eclectic therapists.Recent surveys have indicated that between 30-40% of therapists in the United States identify themselves as eclectic in orientation and, in practice, combine therapeutic procedures and concepts from different therapeutic orientations (Norcross, 1986). This attempt to integrate different intervention methods apparently grows out of clinical need and is based on the assumption that a selective sampling of other approaches can enhance clinical effectiveness beyond that accomplished by any one therapeutic orientation. For the most part, however, these nascent efforts at integration have proceeded despite a lack of research studies to evaluate their effectiveness or to measure their change processes. This trend toward psychotherapy integration by practicing clinicians, when taken together with research findings indicating that each therapeutic orientation has its share of clinical failures and that none is consistently superior to another (Stiles, Shapiro, & Elliott, 1986), suggests that research efforts on the integration of the psychotherapies are in order.

This Special Section, developed by the American Psychology Association's Division 12 (Clinical) 2011 Committee on Science and Practice, highlights different ideas to help bridge the gap between clinical research and clinical practice, and notes recent innovations that help make research–practice integration feasible. The articles consider how to break down the barriers to enhance researcher–practitioner dialogue, as well as how to make ongoing outcome assessment feasible for clinicians. Moreover, the articles address how to promote training in evidence-based practice, and how to translate efficacy research into clinical practice and clinical insight into empirical study to better establish a two-way bridge between research and practice. Ultimately, we hope this series can speak to many different types of psychologists, whether they work mainly as researchers or practitioners, so they can see new ways to integrate and learn from both research and practice.

Recent years have produced striking advancements in the discovery of effective psychologically based treatments for some anxiety disorders. If this progress continues during the next decade, our understanding of these disorders may be increased to the point where truly effective treatments and/or preventive efforts would be available for all anxiety disorders. Nevertheless, at this juncture there is sizable disagreement among leading clinical investigators on how to proceed with research in this area. Thus, a National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored conference of leading investigators was convened to recommend research strategies that will advance the field toward a truly cumulative body of knowledge. Recommendations were made in the areas of general research strategies, assessment and classification, process research, outcome research, delivery of treatment, and dissemination of results. A summary of these recommendations is presented.

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A review of the published literature in virtually all of the existing theoretical perspectives on psychotherapy suggests that some concept of the "self" is increasingly thought of as a core locus of psychopathology. One can find within the psychoanalytic, cognitive, cognitive-behavioral, experiential, and even the biological literatures evidence of the growing importance of the self in psychopathology and its remediation. The purpose of this paper is to explore this apparent theoretical convergence and the possibility that "self pathology" may represent an integrative treatment focus for the various perspectives on psychotherapy. Self pathology is defined as a disturbance in the individual's sense of self or his/her self-concept. Pathology can be found, therefore, in the contents and processes of the individual's experience of self. Based on this definition, several specific forms of self pathology are delineated as well as how these particular forms of self pathology organize the problematic thoughts, feelings, and actions associated with a number of specific Axis I disorders. A set of integrative treatment principles for repairing various forms of self pathologies is also described. Specific treatment interventions are suggested for specific self pathologies.

The self-experiencing process, in both its reflexive and sentient forms (i.e., self-conception vs. direct experience of self), is critical to our understanding of the genesis and amelioration of anxiety disorders. The unifying phenomena in the various anxiety disorders are the chronic experience of self-endangerment (i.e., the loss of subjective safety) and the cognitive/affective processes that emerge to deal with this sense of catastrophic endangerment. These cognitive/affective processes include (among others) an automatic shift of the patient's focal attention from sentient to reflexive self-awareness, and the consequent difficulties in processing one's emotional reactions to one's perceptions of the external environment. An integrative treatment is proposed for dealing with the symptoms of the various anxiety disorders and for the restoration of sentient self-experiencing which allows the anxiety patient to tolerate, accept, and understand his/her emotional reactions to his/her immediate life experience.