ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2024
The evolution of psychotherapy: from Freud to prescription digital therapeutics.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparing mental health professionals' willingness to use digital therapeutics: a cross-national survey in South Korea and Germany.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Exploring Video Consultations Across the Public and Private Sectors in Norway: Semistructured Interview Study.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolution of psychotherapeutic treatments from Freud to digitally administered evidence-based treatments reflects a history of progressive advance. This history is characterized by identification of problems with the current state of the art, followed by solutions inspired and supported by advances in basic science and technology leading to subsequent recognition of other limitations revealed by the new advance. The common thread running through this process is (a) increasing specificity of the psychotherapeutic interventions, (b) increasing evidence of efficacy and safety, (c) increasing integrity and reliability in the delivery of the intervention, (d) increased equality of access, and (e) recognition of the need for regulation to provide protection for the public from unsafe or ineffective products. This evolution of psychotherapeutic treatments, not surprisingly, has been foreshadowed by the precursor history of the evolution of pharmacologic treatment. Although intellectual history is lumpy and does not sort itself into discrete and coherent epochs, such sorting is a useful heuristic for describing the advance of medicine and the therapeutic enterprise. This paper will discuss six successive epochs of psychotherapy. For each it will discuss the problem of the preceding era it sought to solve, the advance it brought to the field, the emerging science and technology that supported that advance, and the precursor development in pharmacological treatments that foreshadowed that epoch of psychotherapy. Finally, it will conclude with some observations about the proximate future.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.