How can we account for DBT's widespread popularity?

The widespread dissemination of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) nationally and internationally seems to have gone beyond what would be justified by the impressive but slim empirical base to date. After considering the role of the empirical base in the enthusiastic reception of this treatment, I propose some factors other than empirical ones that may help to explain this phenomenon. Principles and strategies that form the core of DBT are posited to account for its considerable appeal. DBT integrates four theoretical orientations reflecting the Zeitgeist of today's mental health community, and synthesizes strategies from acceptance to change and from the pragmatic to the theoretically sophisticated. Dialectical philosophy helps to bring contradictory positions together in DBT in an appealing and effective manner.