Paradigms, promises, and the potential of clinical psychology.
Both Plaud's and Ilardi and Feldman's articles call for clinical psychology to redefine itself according to a particular paradigm or "unifying framework." This commentary focuses on the nature of clinical psychology as an applied discipline, whether clinical psychology in fact has an urgent need for a unifying framework, and whether radical behaviorism or cognitive neuroscience could provide such a framework. It is concluded that, as an applied field that draws both theory and method from a number of natural and social sciences, clinical psychology is served best by continued development and appropriation of competing scientific viewpoints rather than by fealty to a single perspective or paradigm.
Strauman
T J
TJ
Department of Psychology, Social and Health Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA. tjstraum@duke.edu
D001527:Behaviorism; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011586:Psychology, Clinical