About
Psychotherapy is not a menu of techniques. It is a set of living arguments about what suffering is, where it lives in the body, how it gets transmitted between people, and what it takes to change. Every modality carries these arguments — usually without stating them.
Epoché Clinical makes those arguments visible. Each of the 151 modality pages documents not just what an approach does but what it assumes — about the nature of the problem, the role of the therapist, the mechanism of change, and the philosophical lineage that makes those assumptions feel self-evident to people trained in that tradition. Where the evidence is strong, we say so. Where it's weak, we say that too. Where the founders have faced legitimate ethical criticism, that's documented with sources.
Most clinical training teaches technique without philosophy. A student learns EMDR and CBT as separate methods without understanding that they rest on fundamentally different accounts of what memory does, what the body knows, and what change requires. A therapist trained in IFS and a therapist trained in behavioral activation are not just using different tools — they are operating from different ontologies. This site exists because that gap matters, and because understanding it makes you a better clinician.
What's Here
151 therapeutic modalities with mechanisms, evidence, training requirements, blind spots, contraindications, controversies, and philosophical roots. 102 philosophers and theorists whose ideas shape clinical practice. 22 condition topics with associated approaches and condition-specific evidence review status. 22 clinical vignettes showing how different modalities formulate the same case. Interactive tools for comparing modalities, exploring teaching cases, studying concepts, and reflecting on clinical assumptions. A training directory with costs, hours, and certification requirements. Entries connect to related approaches, philosophical sources, and further reading.
Editorial Policy
Every reference page on this site carries a byline naming who wrote it, whether a subject-matter expert has reviewed it, and when it last changed. That line is not decorative. It is there because clinical content that does not say who stands behind it should not be trusted, and because a page that has not been reviewed should say so rather than imply otherwise.
How entries are drafted
Entries are drafted with AI assistance from primary and secondary sources, then edited by hand by Matthew Sorg, who is responsible for everything published here. Entries describe mechanisms, philosophical commitments, training requirements, blind spots and controversies. Evidence labels require a separate assessment with a population, rationale, source links and review date. Source checks and completed condition assessments are shown separately; entries with neither display “Assessment not yet completed.” Source-based assessments may be prepared with AI assistance and are distinct from expert clinical review, which is attributed only when recorded. Individual guideline checks identify the authority, recommendation and scope; they do not certify the rest of an entry. Earlier clinical and historical prose remains subject to source review.
How subject-matter review works
Review is a named, dated act by a named person, recorded against the individual entry rather than the site as a whole. A reviewed page names its reviewer and the date in the byline. A page that has not yet been reviewed says Expert review not yet recorded, and its structured data omits the review claim entirely rather than substituting the date the file last changed. Source checks and AI-assisted assessments do not create that expert-review record. That is an accurate description of where the project is, and it will change one entry at a time.
How corrections are handled
Anyone can flag an error through the corrections form, without needing to know what the right answer is. Substantive corrections are logged with what was wrong, what replaced it, and why. The August 2026 audit report records that earlier review. Subsequent checking found additional evidence-classification and source-attribution errors. Neither audit establishes that every claim on the site has been verified.
Reviewers
Clinicians willing to review entries in their area of expertise are welcome to get in touch through the corrections form. Review credit is attributed by name on every entry reviewed.
About the Author
Matthew Sorg is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and EMDRIA Certified Therapist practicing on Capitol Hill in Seattle. He holds an MA in Existential-Phenomenological Psychology and a Master of Library and Information Science — a combination that shapes both the clinical orientation of his work and the information architecture of this site.
His private practice, Epoché Psychotherapy, specializes in trauma therapy for adults, using EMDR, Brainspotting, Flash Technique, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP), grounded in an existential-phenomenological orientation. Before training as a therapist, he spent a decade in scholarly publishing and information architecture.
A Note on the Name
Epoché (ἐποχή) is the phenomenological practice of suspending what you think you know — bracketing assumptions, theories, and prior interpretations — in order to attend to what is actually present. It is a useful discipline in philosophy. It is an essential one in clinical work. The name reflects what this site asks of its readers: before you commit to a modality, understand what it assumes. Before you dismiss an approach, understand what it sees that yours might not.