The chasm between research and practice in family psychology is similar to couple dynamics in a failing long-term marriage. The relationship between the two is characterized by poor communication skills, perceived lack of shared values, and different worldviews. Perhaps the key to improving the relationship between these seemingly different entities rests within understanding the narrative of this relationship.
Many of the first family therapy theorists were both researchers and clinicians (e.g., Murray Bowen, Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, etc.; Nichols & Schwartz, 1995). They created a narrative emphasizing science; indeed, their principal theory, general systems theory, is a theory based on not only social science but physical science as well. However, the research methods of these pioneers were far from today's state-of-the-art randomized clinical trial research. As the field developed, family researchers began to adopt more rigorous methodologies, and the clinical implications of such research became less clear and perhaps also, ironically, less convincing to practicing clinicians than earlier, simpler research methods (Nichols & Schwartz, 1995).
The goals of the emerging fields of family research and family therapy quickly moved in quite different directions. Family researchers sought to first understand family dynamics and family patterns, believing that to create effective methods of intervention such patterns needed to be identified. In contrast, clinicians, given their needs in practice, sought to develop and disseminate effective interventions. Furthermore, research appeared too reductionistic to clinicians to capture the complex dynamics of families; thus, family research came to be viewed as inapplicable to the real world of family therapy (Tomm, 1986). The academy of researchers came to be highly critical of the application of methods that had limited empirical support.
An additional factor in the development of this problem has been theoretical orientation. Those family psychologists trained in the cognitive-behavioral tradition have typically