A proposal to solve this obstacle is to relegate the nonspecific factors to the placebo group; However the only guide is the theory that is made to serve, and this is of course biased. Larry Ellison is often quoted on this topic. The method applied to a drug allows to distinguish without theorizations of the biochemical and psychological effect (more or less); in psychotherapy distinguish the specific nature of the nonspecific isn’t clear at the moment, when even We are confident that there is specific. At the same time, placebos are highly specific (depend on specific factors, such as shape, color, given information, etc. and also affect differentially to different targets and some, not at all). And if everything there is in psychotherapy are common factors? To replicate the placebo that commonality, would it be equivalent to consider ineffective any psychological treatment (which is what would be completed if a drug is not exceeded to a placebo)? Or would this synonymy a call to increase their knowledge and enhance it? (if essentially disregarding the effect placebo or response to the meaning, has the ability which suggests, imagine if we knew investigate it and understand it; I am not willing to consider any psychotherapy as sophisticated placebos). Compare psychotherapy with a group only waiting list control is so poor that it would be surprising that he not spitting favorable results, even pulling the Tarot; in any case is acceptable (and probably unenforceable) only as an initial minimal validation. The proposal compare with a supportive psychotherapy takes us back to that this is a legitimate intervention with common components every psychotherapy, however much that supposedly lacks specific factors, apart from the problem of finding a general format with external validity.
Finally, there are who proposes a comparison placebo drug, but then the type of expectations created in both groups are not comparable. Only comparison with other bona fide treatments, but then placebo has disappeared and in its place has the habit of appearing the dodo. At the end: concern for the results and their differences dazzles us (us blind?) but equally what we need to see are the mechanisms of change. Meanwhile, the psychotherapy placebo (oxymoron or synonyms) does not seem to be of this world.
