Rebuilding trust in CBT: Intellectual humility and multicultural competencies as responses to political criticism

In recent years, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has come under significant criticism. Whereas critics across the political spectrum worry that CBT centers particular ideological perspectives that undermine its efficacy and harm patients, the details of these criticisms vary. Critics on the political right emphasize psychology's left-leaning ideological homogeneity, the risk of pathologizing ordinary experiences stemming from expanding definitions of harm, and the broader entrenchment of progressive narratives in clinical contexts. Critics on the political left focus on CBT's Western, individualistic orientation, its neglect of clients' cultural traditions, and its insufficient engagement with multicultural perspectives. Although such criticisms are important and worthy of reflection, they also risk portraying CBT as ideologically compromised and undermining confidence among clients, practitioners, and the public. We propose three complementary strategies for navigating this tension. First, recent research suggests that cultivating collective intellectual humility (individual and group-level acknowledgment of limits, openness to diverse perspectives, and willingness to revise assumptions) can help practitioners remain self-critical while promoting trust among the public. Second, expanding multicultural frameworks to explicitly include political identity alongside traditional domains of diversity may improve therapeutic alliances and reduce perceptions of ideological bias. And, finally, providing practitioners with training in political diversity can prevent prematurely signaling one's ideological commitments in a therapeutic context and potentially help the therapeutic alliance. These strategies may allow CBT to engage constructively with legitimate criticisms without eroding its reputation as a scientifically valid and trustworthy practice.