Clinical Psychology

disorder, and evidence-based practices in psychother-
apy and clinical assessment. In recent years, I’ve also
become quite interested in psychology education,
especially in the question of how best to teach scien-
tific thinking to nonscientists.

What are the future trends you see for clinical
psychology?
I see the field of clinical psychology as moving toward
more integration of diverse levels of vertical analysis,
spanning the molecular, physiological, psychological,
social, and cultural. I see that as a positive development,
as I suspect it will foster progress toward understanding
the causes and perhaps treatments of many mental dis-
orders. This trend will mean that clinical researchers and
practitioners will need to become well versed—or at
least broadly familiar—with levels of analysis other than
the strictly psychological. My one worry in this regard is
that the field has recently been moving toward an
undue emphasis on the“lower”(more biological) levels
of analysis in the hierarchy of explanation. In some
research areas, it’s awfully hard nowadays to get one’s
grant funded without a brain imaging component, and
many major psychology departments are insisting that
new faculty hires possess brain imaging experience.
Although I greatly value the biological level of analysis
and view brain imaging as an enormously helpful tool,
we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of“neu-
rocentrism”—regarding the brain as inherently the
most important, or the only important, level of expla-
nation for understanding human behavior. The other
levels matter too, and we must be careful not to lose
sight of the field of psychology in the process.
I also see a movement toward much greater empha-
sis on evidence-based practices in clinical psychology and
closely related fields. Some leaders in our field have criti-
cized the movement toward evidence-based practice or
raised serious questions about it. Although some of the
concerns raised have been constructive in pointing to
better ways of operationalizing evidence-based practice,
others suggest a preference for intuition and subjective
clinical experience over scientific evidence in selecting
treatments. Yet the histories of medicine and psychology
teach us that although intuition and subjective clinical
experience often have useful roles to play in generating
novel ideas for treatments, they can be quite flawed as a
means of evaluating the effectiveness of these treat-
ments. In the long run, our field will be better served by
the recognition that carefully collected scientific evidence

is our best ally against human error—and ultimately our

best hope of alleviating human suffering.

What advice would you give to students in the field

who want to go into clinical psychology?

Before you decide whether you want to attend a clinical

psychology graduate program, ask yourself two ques-

tions: (1) Do you enjoy working with people? (2) Do you

enjoy learning about science? If the answers to both

questions are“Yes,”then the field of clinical psychology

may very well be for you. If the answer to either ques-

tion is“No,”then clinical psychology is almost certainly

not for you. Successful clinical psychology graduate stu-

dents—and successful clinical psychologists—are both

(a) empathic, kind, and oriented toward people and (b)

good scientific thinkers who can apply rigorous critical

thinking skills to everything they do, whether it’s

research, clinical practice, teaching, or consultation.

Clinical psychology requires a distinctive mix of skills and

interests possessed by only a marked minority of under-

graduates. But students who possess this mix often find

the profession immensely gratifying and rewarding,

especially if they can find a graduate program that fos-

ters their passions and shapes their thinking.

Scott O. Lilienfeld

Scott O. Lilienfeld

RESEARCH METHODS IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY 109