Paradigms, promises, and the potential of clinical psychology

✍ Scribed by Timothy J. Strauman

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 50 KB
• Volume: 57
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9762
• DOI: 10.1002/jclp.1079

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Both Plaud's and Ilardi and Feldman's articles call for clinical psychology to redefine itself according to a particular paradigm or “unifying framework.” This commentary focuses on the nature of clinical psychology as an applied discipline, whether clinical psychology in fact has an urgent need for a unifying framework, and whether radical behaviorism or cognitive neuroscience could provide such a framework. It is concluded that, as an applied field that draws both theory and method from a number of natural and social sciences, clinical psychology is served best by continued development and appropriation of competing scientific viewpoints rather than by fealty to a single perspective or paradigm. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 57: 1125–1132, 2001.