Clinical Psychology

• Clinical psychology


  The term was first used in print by Lightner Witmer in 1907. Witmer envisioned clinical psychology as a discipline with similarities to medicine, education, and sociology. A clinical psychologist is a person whose work with others involved aspects of treatment, education, and interpersonal issues.
• Education and training in clinical psychology

  • Most students enter a doctoral program with only a bachelor's degree, but some enter with a master's degree. Training typically consists of at least 4 years of intensive, full-time coursework, followed by a 1-year, full-time predoctoral internship. A master's thesis and doctoral dissertation are required. The most common specialty areas are clinical child, clinical health, forensic, family, and clinical neuropsychology.
• 3 distinct models of training in clinical psychology

  • The scientist-practitioner (Boulder) model
  • The practitioner-scholar (Vail) model
  • The clinical scientist model
• Scientist-practitioner (Boulder) model


  Graduate students would need to receive training and display competence in the application of clinical methods (assessment, psychotherapy, etc.) and the research methods necessary to study and evaluate the field scientifically. Graduate students would (under supervision) conduct both clinical work and their own empirical research (thesis and dissertation).
• Practitioner-scholar (Vail) model


  Focused on the practical application of scholarly knowledge. The growth of the PsyD (or practitioner-scholar model) approach to training in clinical psychology has influenced the field tremendously.
• Clinical scientist model


  Stressed the scientific side of clinical psychology more strongly than the Boulder model. A PhD from a clinical scientist program implies a very strong emphasis on the scientific method and evidence-based clinical methods.
• William Tuke


  • From England. The York Retreat became an example of humane treatment, and soon similar institutions opened throughout Europe and the United States. Long after his death, Tuke's family members continued to be involved in the York Retreat and the movement to improve treatment of mentally ill individuals.
• Philippe Pinel


  • From France. Pinel worked successfully to move mentally ill individuals out of dungeons in Paris, where they were held as inmates rather than treated as patients. He convinced his contemporaries and those with power in France that the mentally ill were not possessed by devils and that they deserved compassion and hope rather than maltreatment and scorn.
• Eli Todd


  • The burden for treating the mentally ill typically fell on their families, who often hid their mentally ill relatives out of shame and embarrassment. Todd had learned about Pinel's efforts in France, and he spread the word among his own medical colleagues in the United States. They supported Todd's ideals both ideologically and financially, such that Todd was able to raise funds to open The Retreat in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1824. Todd ensured that patients at The Retreat were always treated in a humane and dignified way.
• Dorothea Dix


  • Dorothea Dix was working as a Sunday school teacher in a jail in Boston, where she saw firsthand that many of the inmates were there as a result of mental illness or retardation rather than crime. Her efforts resulted in the establishment of more than 30 state institutions for the mentally ill throughout the United States (and even more in Europe and Asia), providing more decent, compassionate treatment for the mentally ill than they might have otherwise received.
• Lightner Witmer


  • Received his doctorate in psychology in 1892 in Germany under Wilhelm Wundt (founder of experimental psychology). In 1896, he founded the first psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had returned as a professor. This was the first time that the science of psychology was systematically and intentionally applied to people's problems. Witmer emphasized that clinical psychology could be applied to adults as well as children, or to problems that had nothing to do with school. Witmer founded the first scholarly journal in the field (called The Psychological Clinic) in 1907, and authored the first article, titled "Clinical Psychology," in the first issue.
• Witmer defined clinical psychology as related to medicine, education, and social work but stated that physicians, teachers, and social workers would not be qualified to practice clinical psychology. Instead, this new field represented a hybrid of these and other influences, requiring a specially trained professional who, of course, would work collaboratively with members of related fields.
• Witmer's definition of clinical psychology was basically uninfluenced by Freud, whose ideas appeared throughout many fields at the time, and that psychotherapy, as it would come to be known, was not explicitly discussed at all.
• The treatments that Witmer discusses in his original definition aren't accompanied by any mention of a plan for empirically evaluating their effectiveness.
• Diagnostic issues in clinical psychology

  • In the 1800s, mental illnesses were often placed in one of two very broad categories: neurosis (psychiatric symptoms but intact grasp on reality) and psychosis (break from reality in the form of hallucinations, delusions, or grossly disorganized thinking).
• Emil Kraepelin


  • The father of Descriptive Psychiatry. He offered a different two-category system of mental illness, differentiating exogenous disorders (caused by external factors) from endogenous disorders (caused by internal factors) and suggested that exogenous disorders were the far more treatable type. Kraepelin put forth the term dementia praecox to describe one endogenous disorder similar to what is now known as schizophrenia.
• Long before the appearance of the first DSM, the original reason for categorizing mental disorders was to collect statistics on the population. In 1840, the U.S. Census Bureau included a single category—"idiocy/insanity"—for this purpose.
• The increase in categories of mental disorders can be explained by either scientific discovery (accurately recognizing disorders that went unrecognized before) or social invention (making disorders out of some aspects of human experience that had previously been considered normal).
• Assessment of intelligence


  • Edward Thorndike promoted the idea that each person possesses separate, independent intelligences. Charles Spearman led a group of theorists who argued for the existence of "g", a general intelligence thought to overlap with many particular abilities.
• Alfred Binet & Theodore Simon


  • Created the first Binet-Simon scale in 1905, which yielded a single overall score, endorsing the concept of "g". It was the first to incorporate a comparison of mental age to chronological age as a measure of intelligence, yielding "IQ" or Intelligent Quotient.
• Lewis Terman


  • Revised Binet's test and called it the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, a child-focused measure of IQ.
• David Wechsler


  • Made the Wechsler-Bellevue test designed specifically for adults, which quickly became popular among psychologists working with adults. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and its revisions remain popular today. Wechsler also designed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) for very young children.
• Assessment of personality


  • Hermann Rorschach developed the Rorschach Inkblot Method, a projective personality test, in 1921. Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray developed the Thematic Apperception Test, another projective personality test, in 1935. Objective personality tests, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), appeared soon after projective tests.
• WISC revisions


  • WISC-R in 1974
  • WISC-III in 1991
  • WISC-IV in 2003
  • WISC-V in 2014
• WPPSI revisions


  • WPPSI-R in 1989
  • WPPSI-III in 2002
  • WPPSI-IV in 2012
• Projective personality test


  Rorschach Inkblot Method
• Projective Personality Test


  Thematic Apperception Test
• Objective Personality Tests


  Appeared soon after projective tests
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)


  Written by Starke Hathaway and J. C. McKinley
• MMPI revisions


  • MMPI-2
  • MMPI-A (Adolescent)
• NEO Personality INVENTORY (NEO-PI)


  No lasting impact than MMPI, its successors are the NEO-PI-R and NEO-PI-3
• Beck Depression Inventory


  Now on its 2nd edition
• Psychotherapy approaches


  • Psychodynamic
  • Behavioral
  • Humanistic
  • Family Therapy
  • Cognitive
• Psychotherapy played a significant role in the history of clinical psychology in the 1940s or 1950s
• Psychodynamic psychotherapy


  • Focuses on unconscious processes as they are manifested in client's current behavior
• Behavioral psychotherapy


  • Emphasizes an empirical method, with problems and progress measured in observable, quantifiable terms
• Humanistic psychotherapy


  • Flourished in the 1960s, as Carl Rogers's relationship- and growth-oriented approach to therapy offered an alternative to both psychodynamic and behavioral approaches
• Family Therapy


  • Revolution took root in the 1950s, and as the 1960s and 1970s arrived, understanding mentally ill individuals as symptomatic of a flawed system had become a legitimate—and, by some clinicians, the preferred—therapeutic perspective
• Cognitive psychotherapy


  • Emphasis on logical thinking as the foundation of psychological wellness, has intensified to the point that it has become the most popular singular orientation among clinical psychologists
• Clinical psychology integrates science, theory, and practice to understand, predict, and alleviate maladjustment, disability, and discomfort as well as to promote human adaptation, adjustment, and personal development