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The past 40 years have generated numerous insights regarding errors in human reasoning. Arguably, clinical practice is the domain of applied psychology in which acknowledging and mitigating these errors is most crucial. We address one such set of errors here, namely, the tendency of some psychologists and other mental health professionals to assume that they can rely on informal clinical observations to infer whether treatments are effective. We delineate four broad, underlying cognitive impediments to accurately evaluating improvement in psychotherapy—naive realism, confirmation bias, illusory causation, and the illusion of control. We then describe 26 causes of spurious therapeutic effectiveness (CSTEs), organized into a taxonomy of three overarching categories: (a) the perception of client change in its actual absence, (b) misinterpretations of actual client change stemming from extratherapeutic factors, and (c) misinterpretations of actual client change stemming from nonspecific treatment factors. These inferential errors can lead clinicians, clients, and researchers to misperceive useless or even harmful psychotherapies as effective. We (a) examine how methodological safeguards help to control for different CSTEs, (b) delineate fruitful directions for research on CSTEs, and (c) consider the implications of CSTEs for everyday clinical practice. An enhanced appreciation of the inferential problems posed by CSTEs may narrow the science-practice gap and foster a heightened appreciation of the need for the methodological safeguards afforded by evidence-based practice.

The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) did not represent the first time a group of psychologists broke away from the American Psychological Association, the parent association of organized psychology in the United States. In fact, the history of organized psychology is replete with examples of splinter groups that sought to better represent the needs and interests of their specific constituencies. All of these breakaway efforts have occurred amid intradisciplinary tensions--the continual push and pull between unity on the one hand and autonomy on the other--that reflect some of the enduring challenges of the field. A historical examination of this dialectic provides a useful framework within which to understand the founding of the APS, its most recent instantiation.

The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) occurred in the context of long-standing dialectical tensions within organized psychology. It represents the most recent breakaway effort from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychology's parent association in the United States. Beginning in the 1970s, numerous APA committees deliberated the Association's structure, making recommendations designed to appease the various constituencies within the changing organization; all but the last of these proposals were ultimately rejected by the APA Council. In 1987, the Assembly for Scientific and Applied Psychologists (ASAP) formed to encourage APA reorganization, and in early 1988, the APA Council approved a reorganization plan; that plan was, however, rejected by the membership. In August 1988, the ASAP became the APS. The early years of the APS were shaped by challenges and successes that would lay the groundwork for the APS to become a prominent organization in the promotion of scientific psychology. An understanding of these events may provide insight into the nature of organized psychology and its future.

Evaluated internalized and externalized anger in adolescent psychiatric inpatients. Results indicated that internalized anger led to depression and feelings of hopelessness and increased chances of suicide attempts. In contrast, externalized anger was related to alcohol-related problems. Thus, different modes of anger expression appear to be related to different manifestations of psychopathology. (BF)

The education and training in professional psychology have origins dating to the beginning of the 20th century, as psychologists working in various applied settings, such as in government, industry, education, and health care, recognized the need to articulate education and training standards for their burgeoning profession. Amid intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary resistance, attempts to define such standards were made by psychologists in an effort to differentiate themselves from a variety of pseudo-psychological practitioners, all of whom represented themselves as psychological experts. Formal developments in the education and training of professional psychologists advanced rapidly during and immediately following World War II, as the federal government, recognizing the acute need for mental health professionals and the relative shortage thereof, invested significantly in the creation of a substantial mental health workforce. One of the most important developments in this regard was the 1949 Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology, which delivered to professional psychology the scientist-practitioner (Boulder) model of training. Its critics notwithstanding, this model has served as a significant frame of reference for the ongoing examination and discussion of the education and training of professional psychologists.