Book Chapter

A History of Education and Training in Professional Psychology

Baker, David B, Cautin, Robin L

2014

Overview

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.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Boulder conference / education and training / History and Systems in Psychology / professional psychology / scholar-practitioner / scientist practitioner
• ISBN: 0199874018, 9780199874019