An asocial psychology and a misdirected clinical psychology.

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The origins of modern clinical psychology cannot be understood independently of some long-standing, dominant characteristics of American psy-chology in general. One such characteristic is psychol-ogy's emphasis on the individual organism, an emphasis that ill prepared psychology in the post-World War II period for the public arena. One of the consequences for clinical psychology was that it became embroiled in the traditions of American medicine. The adverse effects of this are explored and discussed. In what social-historical context did the major fea-tures of modern clinical psychology initially gain expression? How did this context affect the uni-verse of policy alternatives modern clinical psy-chology could have considered in its early phase? Why did clinical psychology so readily accom-modate to a public policy that not only defined what the "mental health problem " was in our so-ciety but also outlined how that problem was to be approached? And why did the basis of that ap-proach in an individual psychology go unexam-ined? It is the last question that interests me the most because I have come to believe that from its inception a hundred years ago, American psy-chology has been quintessentially a psychology of the individual organism, a characteristic that how-ever it may have been and is productive has se-verely and adversely affected psychology's contri-bution to human welfare. I elaborate later on this point, but those who may want to delve more deeply into this question I urge to read the APA publication edited by Hilgard (1978), which con-tains addresses of presidents of the association, be-ginning with William James. With one notable exception one would hardly know that psychology existed in a particular society having a distinctive social order deriving from a very distinctive past, that psychologists did not (and do not) represent a random assortment of people, and that by virtue of their socialization into their society, and their social-professional niche in it, the substance of their theories had to reflect these factors. Instead,

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