The keywords in psychology for this distinction are nomothetic vs. idiographic (which are useful as search terms, or for talking with a small subset of people). Nomothetic approaches deal with general trends among a large number of people, and cover most psychology research (e.g. people who are high in Conscientiousness tend to have more successful careers). Idiographic approaches try to engage with a particular individual's psychology in detail. From what I've read, I'd call CT an idiographic approach to motivated reasoning and defensiveness, with promising potential applications.