Building an integrative science for psychotherapy for the 21st century: Preface and introduction

Psychotherapy is plagued with fragmentation of models, theories, and interventions. The future of psychotherapy requires an integrative framework rooted in the expanding science of psychology, neuroscience, and social contextualism. The papers in this special issue address these challenges for psychotherapy, ranging from explorations of the implications of epigenetics, evolutionary functional analysis, interpersonal neurobiology, the importance of social relationships as physiological regulators, through to the challenges of ethnic diversities and the growing digital technologies. PRACTITIONER POINTS: As therapists, we should be aware of the challenges posed by the proliferating 'schools of therapy' and consider commonalities rooted in a scientific understanding of the mind. The science of understanding the causes, alleviation, and prevention of mental health problems is increasingly multidimensional taking into consideration the interactions between biological, psychological and social processes and in the process dissolving the boundaries between different schools of psychotherapy.