Hello everyone!
Today we’re going to talk about Clinical
Psychology, its definitions, and its history.
Please turn on your captions if you have any
difficulty following along; and let’s get started
So now you can see the official definition
of clinical psychology.
You can pause and read It out for yourself
if you want to, but I am going to focus on
the idea that Clinical Psychology is both,
a science and an art.
While it is important to use the scientific
method to develop standardized procedures
and tests, it is also important to note that
a Psychologist has to determine which tests
and procedures will suit the patient in question.
People with similar problems may not respond
the same way to the same tests.
So there is a great deal of subjective assessment
going on from a psychologist’s point of
view.
Contemporary Clinical Psychology follows an
eclectic approach, which means that it doesn’t
subscribe to a particular theory.
A more holistic model, known as the biopsychosocial
model, is followed in Clinical Psychology
today.
The Biopsychosocial model states that mental
illness can be a result of biological factors,
psychological factors, and even social factors;
but more often than not it’s a mix of all
three.
A person’s life is interconnected.
Thus, a bad day at work can affect one’s
neurochemistry and make them insomniac, which
may then lead to a stressful experience.
This wasn’t always the case.
For example, let us have a look at the Greeks.
Greek philosophers believed that the mind
and body were interconnected and thus mental
illness had spiritual causes.
It was common to see ‘insane’ people meditating
and spending time at temples.
Hippocrates believed that an imbalance in
bodily fluids, called humors, was responsible
for mental illness.
The four humors were Black Bile, Yellow Bile,
Phlegm, and blood.
Excess of any one would cause a different
disorder.
Too much yellow bile would make you choleric
and lead to you being angry while an excess
of black bile would make you melancholic and
lead to you being sad all the time.
Plato believed that mental illness was caused
because of man’s ignorance of himself and
problems in logistikon, the part of the soul
which occupies one’s head.
Aristotle believed that emotional states such
as happiness and anger determine mental illness.
He believed that talking logically to a person
with mental problems would be helpful.
Galen was a believer in induced vomiting and
even bloodletting.
He believed that humans have a main soul which
is located inside the head and a sub-soul
which may be in your heart if you’re a man
and in your liver if you’re a woman.
But to Galen, the soul was a slave and not
the master of the human body.
In fact, mental illness, to Galen, was caused
by the wishes of the soul.
The Middle Ages saw a complete revival of
supernatural practices which involved belief
in witchcraft and sorcery.
There was religious fanaticism all around
since medical science had not developed enough
to explain the causes of the plague, for example.
There was still some hope because of people
like Aquinas who believed that the soul can’t
be sick and hence the source of mental illness
must be physical or the fault must lie in
one’s reasoning and passion.
Paracelsus on the other hand believed that
the arrangement of the stars and the planets
affected one’s mental health.
Even at times like these, people like Vives
and Weyer were trying to humanize the treatment
of the mentally ill.
Renaissance period saw a rise in ultra-rationalism
where everything which could not be seen was
rejected.
People now focused on their life rather than
worrying about what happens after death.
Rene Descartes believed in Mind-Body dualism
which stated that the mind and body were independent
of each other.
There was a development in the physical treatment
of mental illness but it was far from scientific.
It included extreme forms of torture and neglect.
In fact, the English word ‘Bedlam’ which
means chaos comes from the word ‘Bethlehem’
of ‘St Mary’s of Bethlehem’ which was
opened in London.
Their ‘treatment’ included starvation,
cold-water dunking, restrictive cells, and
bloodletting.
In the 19th Century, Cartesian Dualism began
to fall apart.
Rush, who authored the first work on Psychiatry
in America, believed that mind could cause
diseases as well.
Mesmer realized that there were some patients
who had paralysis and blindness, but had no
accompanying physical pathology.
Martin Charcot used Hypnosis to cure Paralysis
and blindness when there was no apparent cause
(physical).
Pinel developed the Moral theory which talked
about maximizing the welfare of the patients
and decided that they should be properly looked
after.
His ideas were followed by Eli Todd who incorporated
them in Hartford, Conneticut.
People such as Emil Kraeplin were studying
and describing Schizophrenia, although he
termed the Scizophrenic attack as Dementia
Precoux.
Krapelin believed that mental illness was
caused by problems in the brain, and they
can have an exogenous (external) or an endogenous
(internal) reason.
In 1892, the American Psychological Association
was set up.
There were many active psychologists at the
time, such as Galton who was interested in
lab experiments and Cattell who was studying
individual differences.
Galton was actually a relative of Charles
Darwin.
Till now, Psychology was more academic-centric
and not applied in any sense.
When Lightner Witmer tried to open a Psychological
Clinic at University of Pennsylvania in 1896
after successfully treating a child who had
problems in spelling; reading; and memory,
he was not supported by his colleagues because
they wanted to study the brain and the mind
rather than actually helping someone with
their knowledge.
Before long, in 1904, University of Pennsylvania
started teaching Clinical Psychology, thanks
to Witmer.
In 1885, Alfred Binet set up France’s first
Psychological Lab.
In 1904, he and Simon were approached by the
French commission to develop tests which would
point out kids with special intellectual needs.
They developed the Binet-Simon test by 1908,
and it was brought to the US by Goddard.
Terman, who was a psychologist at Stanford,
revised the test and labelled it Stanford-Binet
Test.
These tests became an extremely popular way
to help children in their education across
the country.
Clifford Beers was a former mental health
patient who wrote a book called ‘A mind
that found itself’ in 1908, complaining
about the horrific techniques used by mental
asylums.
He gained the support of Adolf Meyer and William James while advocating against the inhumane
treatment and would later go on to lay the
foundation of National Committee for Mental
Hygiene, which then became National Association
for Mental Health.
This movement persuaded William Healy to open
the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute in 1909
and establish child guidance centers across
the country which would pick out kids with
delinquent behavior and try to intervene as
soon as possible so that the conditions can
be reversed.
He was different in his approach from Witmer,
since the latter focused on intellectual abilities
of children while the former focused on behavior.
Finally, who doesn't know about Freud?
He had a holistic and Greek-like approach
towards Psychology but he wasn’t much famous
in the US till 1909, when he was invited by
Stanley Hall who was the first president of
APA to mark the 20th Anniversary of Clark
University.
The celebrations included people such as Jung,
Titchener, and William James!
People interacted with Freud for the first
time in US and his lectures gripped them.
His psychoanalytic theory was then used in
the child guidance centers across the country.
All of this laid the groundwork of what we
now call ‘Clinical Psychology.’
That’s all for this one guys.
I hope you enjoyed the video.
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See you next Monday!
