Exposure and reorganization: The what and how of effective psychotherapy

Despite the proliferation of psychotherapies in recent years there has not been a commensurate growth in our understanding of the effective ingredients of treatment. It seems unlikely that there are multitudes of different mechanisms and processes through which psychological distress is resolved and that each of these different psychotherapies utilises a distinct item from the collection. In fact, the spawning of hundreds of different psychotherapies is perhaps the most telling sign that there may still be much work to do before the important principles of treatment are described and fundamental mechanisms of change are identified. Could a technique as mundane as exposure hold the key to effective psychotherapy? For psychotherapy, is there just one road leading to Rome but a plethora of ways to travel that road?