In this article, we examine the history and controversy of the placebo in psychotherapy. In medicine, beginning in the 1950s, the use of the placebo in double-blind randomized trials has allowed the identification of specific treatments. It seemed logical to researchers that this strategy could be fruitfully adapted for studying psychotherapy. However, noted that the analogy would likely fail because there is no such thing as an “inert psychotherapy.” Notwithstanding the problems with psychotherapy placebos, psychotherapy research moved forward with efforts to make inferences about specificity using placebo types control groups. The discussion of specificity and the therapeutic value of the common factors raise the issue of whether psychotherapy is in and of itself a placebo.