Five myths permeate the counseling and psychotherapy literature. Two of these myths concern the absolute and differential effects of counseling and psychotherapy. Contrary to the conclusions of Smith and Glass's (1977) meta-analysis, it has not been established that aggregated counseling and psychotherapy schools are effective at all, much less are they equally effective. The remaining three myths are more fundamental: our experimental subjects often do not receive treatments appropriate to their clinical problems; our treatments are frequently not deployed as purported; and finally our control groups rarely address one of the most powerful artifacts of all. (Author)