Hans Eysenck (1916-1997) was a German-born psychologist who spent almost his entire career at the University of London. He was a strident critic of what he called “psychotherapy,” and a proponent of what many others call “behavioral therapy.” His most famous publication on psychotherapy appeared in 1952: The Effects of Psychotherapy: An Evaluation by H. J. Eysenck (1952), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 16, 319-324. He concluded from a review of several studies of psychotherapy efficacy that psychotherapy was worthless and that what appeared to be effectiveness was mere spontaneous remission.
Twenty years later, I was beginning to develop an interest in psychotherapy, both personal and professional. As a methodologist, Eysenck’s famous 1952 work struck me as incompetent. I undertook in partnership with Mary Lee Smith to do a proper review of the literature and arrive at my own evaluation of the effects of psychotherapy. The result, first presented as a Presidential address at the 1976 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association and later published in the American Psychologist as the first quantitative literature synthesis to bear the name “meta-analysis,” was Smith, M.L. & Glass, G.V (1978). Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies. American Psychologist, 32, 752-60.
The following exchange between Eysenck and ourselves was later published in the American Psychologist.
As an aside – David A. Shapiro, a psychology professor at the University of Sheffield, contacted me in about 1980 with the idea of staging a debate between Eysenck and me at a meeting of the British Psychological Society. A meeting was about to take place in February or April – I forget which – in York. Shapiro knew Eysenck and thought he could induce him to attend. It was no burden to me to travel to England, and a dinner with Shapiro and his wife in Sheffield was delightful. York was beautiful. But Eysenck did not show.
1978
First, Eysenck's criticism of the Smith & Glass article.
And finally, Glass & Smith's reply:
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