Contemporary and Applied Psychology

• Contemporary psychology shows awareness of diversity.
• Pure scientific and applied psychology have an uneasy relationship.
• There is controversy over the training of clinical psychologists.
• Awareness of psychology's two cultures is important.
• There is concern over psychology's status as a science.
• Postmodernism influences psychology.
• Awareness of new topics in psychology is necessary.

Divisions of the American Psychological Association

• The American Psychological Association (APA) was founded in 1892.
• It started with a small group of charter members.
• Today, there are 54 divisions representing various interests and specialties.

Basic and Applied Psychology

• Tension existed from psychology's start between those wanting it as a pure science (like Wundt) and those wanting to apply its principles (like Hall, Cattell, and Münsterberg).
• The founding of the APA did not reduce this tension.
• Titchener refused to participate because of the tension, creating The Experimentalists instead.
• While scientific psychology progressed steadily, applied psychology and clinical psychology evolved slowly.
• World War I created a need to evaluate recruits, leading to tests like the Army Alpha and Beta.
• In 1925, the APA created a category for members doing applied work with little research.
• In 1944, the APA organized into 18 divisions, including psychology as a profession for human welfare.
• After World War II, the need for psychotherapy increased dramatically, leading to many types of psychotherapies.

Clinical Psychology

• When clinical psychologists began psychotherapy, they competed with psychiatrists.
• They had battles over the services they could provide.
• The only battle lost was the ability to prescribe medicine.
• State psychological associations are working to gain these privileges though legislation.

Training Clinical Psychologists

• Witmer established a tradition of aligning clinical psychology with scientific psychology.
• The scientist-practitioner model was reconfirmed at the Boulder conference.
• A new professional degree, Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), was created for those trained as applied clinicians without research training.

Schism

• The APA evolved to where applied members outnumbered research-oriented psychologists.
• In 1959, scientific psychologists left the APA to form their own organization.
• This became The Psychonomic Society.
• Another group later formed the American Psychological Society (APS), now the Association for Psychological Science.

Psychology's Two Cultures

• William James divided philosophers into two groups: tender-minded and tough-minded.
• Snow noted that humanities members are characterized as tender-minded.
• Scientists are characterized by the tough-minded temperament.
• Communication between the two groups is nearly impossible.
• Kimble's research found experimental psychologists tend to be tough-minded.
• Humanistic psychologists and psychotherapists tend to be tender-minded.

Role of Personality

• Psychology's history and the Zeitgeist created a psychological smorgasbord.
• A psychologist's personality determines which items in that smorgasbord are appealing.

Psychology's Status as a Science

• Koch concludes that psychology is several disciplines.
• Some disciplines are scientific, and some are not.
• He believes that "psychological studies" is a more accurate label than calling it the "science of psychology."
• The question remains- "Can psychology ever be unified?", and should it be?
• Most agree psychology is a collection of different facts, theories, assumptions, methodologies, and goals.

Postmodernism

• Premodernism is the belief that everything is explained by Church dogma.
• This was prevalent during the middle ages.
• Church authority began to be questioned, and more objective inquiry methods developed.
• Experience and reason were emphasized in the quest for knowledge during the Enlightenment.
• Modernism and Enlightenment are synonymous.
• Hume and Kant attacked Enlightenment ideas, followed by romanticism and existentialism.
• Postmodernism, or social constructionism, attacked Enlightenment ideals in the mid-1960s.
• Postmodernism believes "reality" is created by individuals and groups within personal, historical, and cultural contexts.
• Like the Sophists, skeptics, romantics, existentialists, and humanist psychologists, postmodernism believes "truth" is relative to cultural, group, and personal perspectives.

Wittgenstein's Language Games

• Language is a tool used by community members to communicate with each other.
• Each community creates their language games which create their "form of life”.
• Understanding a community means understanding its language games.
• Understanding that philosophical and psychological paradigms reflect their language games can resolve disputes among philosophers and psychologists.

Family Resemblance

• Past philosophers thought membership in a category required possessing a defining characteristic.

• Wittgenstein, however, rejected this argument.

• The search for essences or universals is doomed to failure.

• He replaced the concept of essence or universal with family resemblance.

• Modernists believe science reveals the truth about human nature.

• Postmodernists believe science is one approach among many to understand human nature.

• The debate between the two continues in psychology today.

Is There Anything New in Psychology?

• Throughout psychology's history, emphases have changed, and research tools have improved.
• Psychology is still addressing the same questions it has addressed since its inception.
• Some enduring questions are, What is the nature of human nature? How are the mind and body related? To what extent, if any, is behavior freely chosen or completely determined?
• Psychology is not an area for those with low tolerance for ambiguity.
• Psychology must be as diverse as the humans whose behavior it explains.

Explore contemporary psychology's awareness of diversity and the tension between pure scientific and applied approaches. Understand the controversies in clinical psychologist training, the influence of postmodernism, and the importance of recognizing psychology's two cultures. Learn about the APA's divisions and the ongoing debate over psychology's status as a science.