CHAPTER 16
Clinical Psychology
DONALD K. ROUTH AND JOHN M. REISMAN
337LIGHTNER WITMER AND THE FOUNDING OF
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY 338
A SCIENTIFIC ART? 339
AN ARTISTIC SCIENCE? 341
A SUSTAINING ZEITGEIST 341
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUGGLES AND
TRAINING MODELS 344
A NURTURING ZEITGEIST 345
SUBSEQUENT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTS 347
TREATMENT INTERVENTIONS 348
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE TRENDS 352
REFERENCES 353Clinical psychology may be defined as “a scientific and pro-
fessional field that seeks to increase our understanding of
human behavior and to promote the effective functioning of
individuals” (Reisman, 1991, p. 3). Clinicians share with
other psychologists a valuing of truth and a commitment to
its determination, which they believe is best done through
scientific methods. However, they are also committed to
being of help to people, who often present urgent problems
that require immediate assistance. They emphasize the value
and uniqueness of each individual and so strive to provide
services to all populations. Thus, they have faced, and no
doubt will continue to face, the dilemma of addressing insis-
tent and pressing human needs with measuring instruments
and methods of treatment whose validities are questioned by
others, as well as by clinicians themselves.
In this chapter, we are going to consider the history of
clinical psychology through its various phases of develop-
ment. We will view the field in the context of the changing
milieu of attitudes and professional approaches that have
characterized the area known as mental health. Throughout
the relatively short history of the field, there have been dif-
fering views as to the roles of science and “art,” as well as
both favorable climates (which we have titled zeitgeists) and
resistance within the field. We shall also review the changing
requisites for training and qualifying clinicians and treatment
approaches and take a brief view of current and possible fu-
ture developments.
Surprisingly, the history of clinical psychology is almost
as long as the history of scientific psychology itself. Scien-
tific psychology is often said to have begun when Wilhelm
Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory at the Uni-
versity of Leipzig in 1879; clinical psychology can be said to
have originated when Lightner Witmer, who earned his doc-
torate under Wundt established the first psychological clinic
at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 (Routh, 1996;
Routh & DeRubeis, 1998; Witmer, 1897). Since at that time
psychology itself was still in an early stage of gaining aca-
demic, scientific, and public acceptance, many psychologists
had misgivings about the prudence of establishing an applied
field of their discipline. In fact, almost a century later many
clinicians believe such misgivings continue to remain
detectable.
The early clinical psychologists thought of themselves as
researchers, psychometricians (or measurers), and reeduca-
tors in the areas of individual differences, the ways in which
people differ from one another, such as intelligence (see the
chapter by Sternberg in this volume), personality (see the
chapter by Sternberg, the chapter by Barenbaum & Winter,
and the chapter by Weinstein & Way, all in this volume), and
abnormal behaviors (see the chapter by B. Mayer & A. Mayer
in this volume). Because the histories of those topics are ad-
dressed in those and other related chapters within this volume
(e.g., see the chapter by Mandler, the chapter by Morawski &
Bayer, and the chapter by Marecek, Kimmel, Crawford, &
Hare-Mustin) our task is made easier than it might have been.
Yet it must also be pointed out and acknowledged that clini-
cians draw, more or less, from almost every area of psy-
chology, and thus every chapter is of some relevance to the
history of clinical psychology. So, recognizing the arbitrari-
ness of what we are about, let us begin.