The “Gold Standard” Myth: Deconstructing CBT-Specific Claims in Favor of Common Factors and Cross-Modality Frameworks in Psychotherapy

Claims that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) represents a “gold standard” for psychotherapy are largely grounded in outcome research derived from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, although clinical trials validate the efficacy of CBT, a close analysis reveals that they fail to establish its superiority over alternative modalities. Furthermore, these studies lack the methodological architecture required to isolate cognitive restructuring as the primary mechanism of change, let alone substantiate the claim that such restructuring is proprietary to the CBT framework. Despite this, the CBT research community frequently conflates outcome data with proof of its unique theoretical claims, an assertion that RCTs, by design, are unequipped to validate. The author argues that the assumption of cognitive restructuring as a mechanism of change unique to CBT is not merely a clinical oversight but rests on a fundamental epistemological error. Contemporary process research and experimental cognitive psychology increasingly support a common factors account of psychotherapeutic change, reframed in terms of psychological flexibility. The author further argues for the importance of research literacy within clinical fields, emphasizing that research evidence is neither neutral nor ontologically given and that scientific authority should not be accepted uncritically on the basis of methodological claims alone. From this perspective, the author contends that if a genuinely cross-modality approach to psychotherapy is to emerge, the humanistic field is better positioned to serve as an integrative framework given its broader epistemological orientation and sustained attention to the relational, biographical, social, political, and economic dimensions of psychological life.