ABSTRACT
Along with, and slightly behind, the general field of psychotherapy, couple and family therapy has experienced an empirical tsunami over the last twenty-five years. The bulk of this wave has taken the form of establishing empirically supported treatments (ESTs). As this volume and the recent literature attest, there is now a substantial number of empirically supported couple and family therapies. These therapies have been manualized, therapists have been trained in the manualized treatments, and the prescribed treatments have been tested and shown to be more effective than no treatment or treatment as usual in clinical trials. Most of the clinical trials have been focused on specific disorders in specific populations (particularly substance abusing, conduct disordered adolescents; depressed and relationally distressed partners in couple therapy; and affectively and thought-disordered adults in couples and families).
