History of Clinical Psychology

• Clinical psychology has tried to understand and explain behavior that is bizarre, with explanations involving magical forces/supernatural phenomena.
• The term ‘clinical’ implies a method, and not a locality.
• Words seldom retain their original significance, and clinical medicine, is not what the word implies, - .
• Possessed by demons, spirits and treatment involved exorcisms.
• Hippocrates attempted to explain bizarre behavior through use of medical model, believing that abnormal behavior stemmed from natural causes, behavior disorders are a function of distribution of our bodily fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm.
• Hippocrates' work paved the way for the concept of mental illness.
• Treatment of Mentally-Ill involved social isolation, demonization, institutionalization in sanitariums/mental hospitals, often for a life-time in conditions that were in-humane.
• Treatment began to gradually change by late 18th and early 19th century with movements led by Europeans and Americans such as Philippe Pinel, Benjamin Rush, William Tuke, and Dorothea Dix, who pushed for more humane living conditions and treatments.
• 1879 marks the beginning of modern psychology, when Wilhelm Wundt established the 1st Laboratory in Germany that studied mental health process, using empirical methods to understand human behavior and observation and experimentation.
• Lighter Witmer, the 1st clinical psychologist, headed the University of Pennsylvania program and used scientific method to diagnose and treat a client.
• Emphasis on scientific approach to understanding human behavior and diagnosis of problems, with less emphasis on treatment.
• Beginning of debate between clinical psychology as a science versus clinical application, with belief that scientific evidence should be the basis for clinical practice.
• Witmer has been known for his great contributions to the field of clinical psychology and applying the knowledge of psychology to helping other people, especially children.
• Witmer founded the first clinical psychology laboratory in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and was the first professional to use the term “clinical psychology”.
• Witmer assisted many children in overcoming what he referred to as “defects” in his laboratory.
• Witmer is considered the Founder of Clinical Psychology.
• In 1907, Witmer published his second most pivotal article in relation to his clinical psychology laboratory, “Clinical Psychology”, which provided a personal account of the events leading up to his desire to open such a laboratory and the specific procedures of his laboratory.
• Witmer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at the age of twenty-one with his BA degree.
• In the latter of Witmer’s career, there was a strong emphasis on the environmental and socioeconomic role in relation to the development of a child’s capacity.
• Witmer defined defects as “not a disease, nor is it necessarily the result of a defect in the brain, but a mental status, a stage of mental development.
• James McKeen Cattell, who was a professor in the political science department, immediately began work to open a laboratory on the University campus.
• Witmer began graduate school in 1889 in the department of philosophy.
• Witmer was one of four graduate students in the experimental psychology program and was assigned to collect data on individual differences in reaction time using all classes of persons as subjects.
• While the term ‘clinical’ has been borrowed from medicine, clinical psychology is not a medical psychology.
• Witmer made great advancements in the fields of school psychology and special education.
• Witmer was an Art major, but after just two years transferred to Finance and Economy.
• Witmer was originally on the more hereditarian side of the heredity-environment controversy, but later in life he became one of the first to swim against the hereditarian tide.
• Witmer guided psychologists, and other professionals, in the necessary steps to aid children in overcoming learning disabilities.
• Shortly after beginning graduate school, Witmer changed departments to political science.
• Witmer was a pioneer in the field of clinical psychology and helping others.
• Witmer provided an accurate definition of the terminology “clinical psychology” which was first introduced in this publication.