Historical Influences And Modern Descriptions
Historical Influences And Modern Descriptions
Prepare a table of historical influences and modern descriptions that identifies and explains five commonly used contemporary clinical
approaches in psychotherapy in the treatment of mental illness. Your audience for this table is a class of graduate students who will use your
table as a study guide as they learn the history of clinical psychology.
Column 1 in your table of influences should present the commonly used name of the approach and a brief definition as well as one or two key
aspects of its practice today. Column 2 should list one or two of its principle theorists or founders with a few important details about who they
were and what they contributed. Column 3 should contain one or two individuals or traditions from history that influenced the development of
the approach. Finally, Column 4 should include a brief statement of your assessment of the efficacy of the approach. You can include a brief
introduction before the table and/or a brief conclusion after the table if you wish, but a reference list is required.
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Support your assignment with at least five scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly
resources, including older articles, may be included.
Length: 5-7 pages, not including title and reference pages Use APA format.
The attached documents have to be referenced.
contentserver.asp5_.pdf
contentserver.asp1_.pdf
contentserver.asp2_.pdf
contentserver.asp3_.pdf
contentserver.asp4_.pdf
contentserver.asp_.pdf
The First Psychological Clinic
D uring the early years of his tenure at the University of Pennsyl- vania, Witmer had structured his career strictly in the mainstream of the new experimental psychology. His articles and presentations had been frequent and well received. H e was a charter member of APA, and al- though still quite young (he was only 28 in 1895), he had been ap- pointed to an important APA committee. Further, he held one of the more prestigious chairs in American psychology and was in line for even- tual promotion to full professor.
Certainly, i t would have been predicted at this time that Witmer would continue working from an experimental, laboratory-oriented per- spective and probably would become one of the leaders in the new scientific psychology. Indeed, such a prediction would not have been altogether amiss. He did continue with laboratory work, and as late as 1904, he presented a paper on psychophysics at the 13th Annual Meet- ing of the American Psychological Association.’ Further, as is evident in the chapters to follow, Witmer always maintained, in his own mind at least, a strong identification with laboratory-based research.
Nevertheless, there also existed in Witmer this other, this more prac-
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10253-005 Lightner Witmer: His Life and Times, by P. McReynolds Copyright © 1997 American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
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70 L I G H T N E R W I T M E R
tical, more person-oriented interest that has been noted earlier in pre- vious chapters. Here, briefly, is a summary of the earlier indications of Witmer’s interest in working directly with people in some kind of help- ing relationship. First, there was his inclination toward a career in the law, a motivation so strong that he remembered it vividly in his latter years. Even his passing undergraduate flirtation with business and polit- ical science bespeaks an orientation toward an applied career. Next, there was his interest, when he was teaching at the Rugby Academy, in work- ing with a boy who had learning problems. Later, when he had had this same boy in a class at the University of Pennsylvania in 1894- 1895, he was again intrigued and challenged by the young man’s limitations. Then, according to his later testimony, Witmer, while in Germany, was thinking of what was later to become clinical psychology. These early clues to his future course, based as they were on his recollection some years later, may have been somewhat altered in the process of recall; however, they were not at all implausible. Indeed, the implausible thing would be for Witmer’s interest in an applied, helping vocation to have appeared suddenly, without a prior period of incubation.
Although this applied perspective in Witmer’s thinking had lain dor- mant since 1890, when he became assistant in psychology under Cattell, it now began to reassert itself. One manifestation of this interest was a focus on child psychology. As already noted, Witmer began offering a seminar in this area in the 1894-1895 school year.‘ Interest in the psychology of children was not unique with Witmer, as it was an emerg- ing field in the early to mid 1890s, stimulated largely by the broader child study movement. While Witmer himself had never taken a course in child psychology as such, his courses in educational psychology at Leipzig undoubtedly included extensive material on developmental psy- chology. These courses should be given considerable weight in tracing the process of Witmer’s professional development. Before he went to Germany, he had no training whatsoever in practical, applied psychol- ogy; at Leipzig, however, he took four courses in education, and edu- cational psychology is preeminently an applied discipline. Further, Ger- many was then probably the leading center for the study of pedagogical principles. Although specific information on the content of the four courses that Witmer took in education is not available, it can be assumed that they included material on the views of such preeminent educational reformers as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel and of
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