Clinical Psychology's Past and Present

Abstract

THE ROOTS OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY SECTION PREVIEW Three sets of social and historical factors initially shaped clinical psychology and continue to influence it. These factors include (a) the use of scientific research methods—the empirical tradition, (b) the measurement of individual differences—the psychometric tradition, and (c) the classification and treatment of behavior disorders—the clinical tradition. The roots of clinical psychology extend back to before the field of psychology was ever named, back to developments in philosophy, medicine, and several of the sciences. A few of these roots are especially important because they converged and created the field of clinical psychology, though only in embryonic form. The Empirical Tradition Historians typically mark the beginning of modern psychology as 1879, the year that Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory devoted to studying mental processes in Leipzig, Germany. Wundt was convinced that psychology—like biology, physics, and other sciences—should seek knowledge through the application of empirical research methods. He and others who came after him were determined to study human behavior by employing the two most powerful tools of science: observation and experimentation. The founding of Wundt's laboratory was not the only beginning point for the new discipline. Others in physiology and medicine had been working on problems that were essentially psychological in nature. For instance, Johannes Muller and his student Herman Helmholtz identified and explored the neural pathways for vision and hearing, discoveries that addressed the question of how physical energy became mental experiences. Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner showed that people's perceptual experiences changed in mathematically predictable ways as stimuli (e.g., weight or brightness) changed, suggesting that mind and body were fundamentally connected (Hunt, 1993). Still, Wundt is regarded as the founder of psychology because the advent of his laboratory so clearly proclaimed psychology as a science and because he trained many students who went on to establish psychology programs in European and U.S. universities. One of Wundt's students was an American named Lightner Witmer. Following his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1888, Witmer worked on his PhD in psychology with Wundt at the University of Leipzig. After completing his doctorate in 1892, Witmer was appointed director of the University of Pennsylvania psychology laboratory. In March 1896, a local schoolteacher named Margaret Maguire asked Witmer to help one of her students, Charles Gilman, whom she described as a “chronic bad speller.”