"The A-B-C " model of emotion was develped by who?

Leopold Bellack, who was an MD psychoanalyst but also an all but dissertation (ABD) psychologist, developed brief psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy in order to make psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy more accessible to large #s of people; Bellack also made contributions to our understanding of psychosis in persons with ADHD

Article Attention deficit disorder psychosis as a diagnostic category

Wundt made psychology a discipline....

Article Wilhelm Wundt

Aaron T. Beck deserves the lion's share of credit for developing cognitive-behavioral theory and therapy, which have uncontroversially transformed the field of clinical psychology. (Albert Ellis also contributed to a smaller extent, by developing Rational-Emotive Therapy and coining the "A-B-C model" of emotion referenced above, though I'd say Beck ended up having far greater success and influence - largely because he took pains to make his theory empirically testable).

I'd second Beck, for sure. But he is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. 

And I don't suppose I could nominate the psychologists behind the US torture regimes either, since the programmes were a fiasco. 

http://fpif.org/psychologists_and_torture_then_and_now/

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7474412&page=1

Judith Beck, PhD is a psychologist at the Beck Institute

Article Symptom-Specific Group Therapy for Inpatients with Schizophre n i a

BF Skinner and Albert Ellis and Marsha Linehan

Article Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts

Article The Albert Ellis legacy.

Article Alec L. Miller, Jill H. Rathus og Marsha M. Linehan: Dialect...

I too would suggest that Dr. Aaron T. Beck has fundamentally shifted the practice of clinical psychology by developing cognitive therapy (CT) a well-supported evidence-based treatment for a number of disorders. Cognitive therapy , often labeled as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), has grown exponentially as evidenced by its ubiquitous presence in training programs in psychology, psychiatry, medicine, social work, nursing and other allied health professions that value evidence-based practice. CT and CBT have been described as “the fastest growing and most heavily researched systems of psychotherapy on the contemporary scene” 

Cognitive therapy is a system of psychotherapy with a powerful theoretical

infrastructure, which has received extensive empirical support, and

a large body of research attesting to its efficacy for a wide range of psychiatric

and medical problems.

No-one is suggesting Beck isn't important. I'm just pointing out that he wasn't a clinical psychologist. And while Judith Beck is a good psychologist, I wouldn't credit her with anything like a success story. 

Was Skinner a success story? Yes, in the sense of creating an enormously influential science of the prediction and control of behaviour. But not in the sense of actually delivering success stories in clinical psychology. Indeed, the radical removal of lived experience from Skinnerian psychology, and the emphasis on control, made it a dehumanising and sterile paradigm.

Ellis, on the other hand, is a figure I had, to my shame, forgotten. I'd certainly second his nomination. I recall hearing a recording of one of his sessions and he struck me as warm and funny, as well as devastatingly insightful.

Perhaps, Stephen, that's the problem : methods that worked in the absence of theoretical support, and theoretical approaches that didn't deliver. 

Any good history of clinical psychology will be filled with stories that do not place Beck at the center. I wouldn't be too literal about what constitutes clinical psychology, but do find it odd that there are so many responses focused on Beck, as though others therapies didn't help a lot of people:

A History Of Clinical Psychology (Series in Death Education, Aging, and Health Care,) 2nd Edition by John M. Reisman Publisher: Taylor & Francis; 2 edition (February 3, 1991) Language: English ISBN-10: 1560321881 ISBN-13: 978-1560321880

Ellenberger, H. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious. New York: Basic Books.

Fine, R. (1979). A history of psychoanalysis. New York: Columbia University Press.

You might find some good references in the classic Seligman paper on the Consumer Reports study---there area a lot of critiques, which you should be able to find easily, but in general I'd say clinical psychology in general is a success story:

The effectiveness of psychotherapy: The Consumer Reports study.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.50.12.965

By Seligman, Martin E. P.

American Psychologist, Vol 50(12), Dec 1995, 965-974.

Consumer Reports (1995, November) published an article which concluded that patients benefitted very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder; psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse. The methodological virtues and drawbacks of this large-scale survey are examined and contrasted with the more traditional efficacy study, in which patients are randomized into a manualized, fixed duration treatment or into control groups. I conclude that the Consumer Reports survey complements the efficacy method, and that the best features of these two methods can be combined into a more ideal method that will best provide empirical validation of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

I also wonder what's the "question behind the question". Do you need to frame it in a different way?

Thank you for your answer Dr. Kemp. You asked me, as the original poster, what is the "question behind the question". I tried to word my question as plainly as I could. We all know that there is a vast literature containing thousands of theories about mental health, some percentage of which have been tested experimentally, some put into clinical practice, and some anointed by their inclusion in the DSM. Which among these theories and practices have actually had the greatest impact on people's lives. It seems like a very basic question that might come up in a Psych 101 class. But it's a question that I do not know the answer to, since I am not myself a clinical psychologist.

It is my understanding that Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) developed by Marsha Linehan has achieved the most success among the largest number of patients based on studies conducted. This particular type of therapy was developed to facilitate healing in patients with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder who were at one point considered 'untreatable" with either drugs or therapy, and who exhibit high rates of suicidality and endemic self-harming behaviors. The lowering of suicide risk, and in fact, the lower incidence of suicide and self-harming exhibited in this population with the use of this treatment protocol is a strong indicator of it's therapuetic success. It has also been shown to be effective among other populations where emotional deregulation is considered unmanageable and suicide and/or self-harming risk is high, such as Bipolar Disorder, and CPTSD. It has become the best standard of care in these populations.

Hope this answer is of some use.

Of particular interest to those in the CAADE's Addictions Studies Certification cohort is this study relating to the use of this therapy in the treatment of Substance Abuse:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2797106/

But a long list of studies support it's efficacy.

The following list is illustrative, but far from inclusive.

The following are numerous journal articles examining the efficacy of DBT:

Dialectical behaviour therapy in the treatment of borderline personality disorder

RICHARD C. BLENNERHASSETT, JENNIFER WILSON O’RAGHALLAIGH

The British Journal of Psychiatry Mar 2005, 186 (4) 278-280; DOI: 10.1192/bjp.186.4.278

https://blogs.uw.edu/brtc/publications-articles-on-dialectical-behavior-therapy-dbt/

http://www.linehaninstitute.org/downloads/LatestResearch/2015.08.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3739299/