visagrunt wrote:
The first question that comes to my mind is, "Are we speaking of clinical psychology or experimental psychology?" The two are, of course, inextricably linked, but I think they each have their particular strengths and weaknesses.
Too often I see my colleagues in the medical profession forget that the practice of medicine is as much art as it is science. Too often we forget that patients whose responses to therapy are not as we expect them to be are not, "outliers." The science of our profession is measured in confidence intervals and standard deviations, but the art of our profession is practiced in the very human interaction between patient and physician. (And note who comes first in my formulation).
Now we may criticize the practice of clinical psychology as lacking in some expectation of scientific rigour or precision. But I do not believe that criticism to be entirely well founded, and even in circumstances where the rigour may seem lacking, the professionalism may well be there.
I firmly believe that counselling can be a preferable approach to medication in some presentations of disorders like depression, anxiety, PTSD and their ilk. But like any responsible physician, I know that the approach of general application is not always best for the specific patient.
then there are people like me with depression, anxiety and PTSD who are not helped by counseling or prescription drugs.
24 Jul 2011, 5:37 pm
