What Is Clinical Psychology?

Clinical psychology is an important branch of applied psychology. Reber described clinical psychology in his editor's "Clinical Psychology" dictionary: It studies all human perverted behaviors, and explores the arguments, assessments, classifications, treatments, preventions, and scientific studies of these behaviors. In recent years, the concepts and concepts related to individual psychological assistance, crisis intervention, guidance and promotion, and family psychotherapy have given updated connotations to clinical psychology.

Clinical psychology is an important branch of applied psychology. Reber described clinical psychology in his editor's "Clinical Psychology" dictionary: It studies all human perverted behaviors, and explores the arguments, assessments, classifications, treatments, preventions, and scientific studies of these behaviors. In recent years, the concepts and concepts related to individual psychological assistance, crisis intervention, guidance and promotion, and family psychotherapy have given updated connotations to clinical psychology.

Applied psychology is the most vital component of psychology. Clinical psychology focuses on the measurement and evaluation of the capabilities and characteristics of human individuals and analyzes the individuals based on the collected data to support their relevant conclusions. Clinical psychologists help those who have psychological distress. For example, psychotherapy and counseling are important contents of clinical psychology. ^[1]

Chinese name

Clinical psychology

Foreign name

Clinical Psychology

Applied discipline

psychology

Solid

Psychotherapy and counselling

Basic contents of clinical psychology

Clinical psychology is a department of applied psychology that addresses people's psychological problems based on psychological principles, knowledge, and technology. This subject mainly uses psychological tests to evaluate the patient's psychology and behavior, and adjusts and solves individual psychological problems through psychological counseling and psychological treatment. The term "clinical psychology" was first coined by American psychologist Reitner Weitmer in 1896. So far, clinical psychology has become the largest branch of psychology in the United States. Many people engaged in this work are called clinical psychologists or psychotherapists. Clinical Psychology serves a wide range of people, with work spanning academic effectiveness, hospitals, institutions, government, military, business, and law. Generally speaking, clinical psychology is the largest branch of clinical disciplines in medical psychology and belongs to the category of applied psychology. However, in some monographs, the content of medical psychology and clinical psychology are very close, and the two can be regarded as similar. Subject. ^[2]

History of Clinical Psychology

Clinical psychology background

The formal appearance of clinical psychology was in 1896. There were many social and historical factors that contributed to its appearance, but mainly included the following three aspects, namely the use of scientific research methods in psychology, the development of interest in individual human differences, and Views on behavioral abnormalities and treatment.

The father of modern clinical psychology-Reitner Weitmer

American psychologist Reitner Weitmer (1867-1956) was the first clinical psychologist, and created the first psychological clinic in 1896. This was the world's first child-oriented clinic and became clinical The sign of psychology.

Throughout the history of psychology, in the last 25 years of the 19th century, psychology began to develop throughout Europe. As a result of changes in values brought about by industrialization, such as the French Industrial Revolution, which led people to pursue freedom, equality, and solidarity, "a movement to improve social conditions based on personal destiny and rights" has gradually emerged throughout the European continent. In this atmosphere, science, including experiments, has also changed significantly. These changes can be summarized in two aspects: the first is natural observation (as Hippocrates did) and reflective thinking (such as the study of philosophy).

Hippocrates

People began to abandon limited observations and predict the course of events. Skepticism, relativity, and mechanics have become the characteristics of new science. The possibility of real experiments is not only manifested in the form of observation, but also truly distinguishes scientific activities from philosophical thinking. Second, scientists are beginning to realize that they can influence social change. In fact, this atmosphere has also promoted the emergence of new science. For example, psychology was born in Germany, anthropology in Britain, and sociology in France. The book "Principle of Psychology", the father of scientific psychology, successfully spreads psychology. Unlike traditional philosophical tendencies, the book shows a tendency to experiment.

In addition to Fonte, other psychologists such as Brentano, Galton, Cartel, and members of their research team have also made outstanding contributions to the creation of clinical psychology. They believe that psychological action and physical phenomena are different. Their terminology says: "Every psychological phenomenon ... we may have to refer to an object or the nearest object." Physical objects are susceptible to experiments. However, psychological objects have their intentions. Brentano believes that only intuition can approach these consciousnesses. Under his experimental intentional hypothesis, the subject of psychology was placed at the center of theorization of psychology and became a very influential model in European clinical psychology. In addition, Gestalt psychology provided the basis for many psychotherapy models and became a pioneer of contemporary cognitive therapy.

Development of Clinical Psychology

After World War I, few people doubted that psychology was an independent science or a new profession. This is mainly due to the requirements of practice and the emergence of military emergencies. At that time, psychology had occupied a place in the natural sciences. The evaluation and measurement of psychological ability, especially the evaluation of intelligence, played a great role in the application of clinical psychology in practice. An important reason is the spread of the Binai-Simon scale in Europe and the United States, especially in the United States. Compared to the Weitmer test, the Binai-Simon scale assessed higher human functioning and considered individual differences. When this scale was widely used as a classification of people in the field of educational psychology, it attracted the attention of clinical psychology. Psychological diagnosis requires evaluation and diagnosis of psychological ability, and the use object is gradually expanded from children to adults. The use of scales in World War I was well known, and the content of the test was more than just an assessment of intelligence. Clinical psychologists are seen as experts to evaluate and interpret tests on children, out-of-hospital adult patients, and even psychological patients.

Freud

Clinical psychology has begun to develop tools for measuring personality, interests, and emotions. Most of these tools are based on European psychoanalytic perspectives and have a profound impact on North American clinical psychology. Psychologist Hall played a key role. He invited Freud, Jung and other psychologists to give lectures in the United States, so that the perspective of psychoanalysis was spread in the United States. Americans are so interested in the idea of psychoanalysis because it explains the relationship between people and the environment. Clinical psychology needs not only elemental and structuralist views, but also this interpretation of psychoanalysis. As clinical psychology becomes more and more necessary, problems arise in the training and management of these personnel, and an organization is urgently needed. At that time clinical psychology relied solely on the American Psychological Association (APA). In 1917, clinical psychologists established an organization independent of APA. Although it lasted only two years, it gradually entered the establishment and development stage of clinical psychology.

Characteristics of Clinical Psychology

First, clinical psychology focuses on measuring and evaluating the capabilities and characteristics of human individuals. Such measurements and assessments are usually individual and sometimes large sample groups. Analyze individuals based on the data collected to support their relevant conclusions.

Second, clinical psychologists, like other psychologists, focus on the research and understanding of human psychology and behavior. Although animal testing is sometimes performed, clinical psychologists only do this if they cannot use human subjects, or if animal testing can infer human behavior.

Third, the above characteristics are not unique to clinical psychology. What truly reflects the uniqueness of clinical psychology is what Coordin (korchin) calls a 'clinical attitude' or 'clinical orientation', that is, clinical psychologists must comprehensively come from the clinic. Knowledge of practice and other research, trying to evaluate an individual, and ultimately understand and help him. Although clinical psychologists are also interested in general psychological laws and behavioral issues, they are more concerned about how these general principles shape and influence a person's life, and how to treat and intervene. At the same time, clinical psychologists pay more attention to the role of theoretical research and systematic evaluation of results when intervening in psychological distress, rather than direct attention to treatment like psychiatrists and social workers.

Subjects of Clinical Psychology

Clinical Psychological Assessment

Including the collection of individual information (behavior, problems, characteristics, abilities, and intelligence). This information can be used to make a comprehensive description of the patient's problems, diagnose problem behaviors, select treatment techniques, and evaluate the effect of treatment; it can also be used to describe the personality characteristics of individuals and guide individuals to the best Career choice, choosing the subjects to participate in a certain experimental research, determining whether the offender has the ability to take responsibility, etc.

Clinical psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is the most common in the work of clinical psychologists. Its specific work can be called psychotherapy, behavior correction, psychological counseling, etc. The focus of treatment is to eliminate psychological distress or problematic behavior of individuals or groups, and sometimes to prevent psychological problems by providing advice to communities and institutions.

Clinical Psychology Research

Research fields of clinical psychologists are very broad, including neuropsychology, behavioral medicine, stress and social support, social problems, child problems, community development, psychopharmacology, development problems, test preparation and validity testing, personality Diagnosis and Adaptation, Psychoanalytic Theory, Process of Psychotherapy, Brain Injury and Defects, Behavioral Disorders, Marriage and Family Problems, Evaluation of the Effects of Various Forms of Psychotherapy, Design and Analysis of Experiments and Training for Non-Professional Meaning and way, etc.

Clinical Psychology Teaching

A considerable part of the work of clinical psychologists is mainly teaching activities. Courses include personality, psychology, clinical psychology, psychotherapy, behavior correction, interviewing techniques, psychological tests, research design, and clinical assessment.

Clinical Psychology Consulting

Advisory activities include personal health care, legal proceedings, and various internal matters of government departments and organizations. Sometimes help various community service agencies to work.

Clinical Psychology Administration

Due to the characteristics of interpersonal sensitivity, interpersonal skills, and rich research results, clinical psychologists often become managers of some organizations.

Clinical Psychology Clinical Concept

Clinical psychology belongs to the category of applied psychology. Applied psychology is the most vital component of psychology, including four major areas: engineering psychology, educational psychology, clinical psychology, and organizational management psychology. The word "clinical" was originally a proper noun in medicine, but from the actual situation of clinical psychology, the meaning of the word "clinical" has been greatly expanded. In order to give a more accurate definition of clinical psychology, it is necessary to make correct estimates of its research objects and main tasks. According to psychiatric data, it can be determined that people with real mental illness only make up a very small number of people, about seven thousandths or ten thousandths. According to mental health data, there are only a few people who do not have any psychological problems or disorders. The vast majority of people are in the transition zone from no psychological problems to mental illness. Assuming that people's mental health is normally distributed, it can be represented by Figure 1.

The psychiatric patient is the object of psychiatry, and the extremely healthy person does not need psychological correction. Then, people in the transition zone who have various psychological problems and different levels of psychological barriers are the targets of clinical psychology.

Psychological illusion diagram

From the nature of early work in clinical psychology, it is indeed aimed at helping people with behavioral disorders and mental illness to recover as quickly as possible. Therefore, people naturally think that clinical psychology is an applied discipline that uses psychological knowledge to help patients recover. However, the task of clinical psychology is not limited to this. It also often helps normal people, using psychological knowledge to alleviate people's psychological pressure, solve people's psychological problems, cultivate and train people's good personality to make them the most effective. Level and good adaptability, making the mental activity of normal people more creative.

The definition of clinical psychology can be summarized as follows: Clinical psychology is to use the knowledge and principles of psychology to help patients correct their mental and behavioral disorders, guide and train healthy people through psychological counseling, so as to effectively adapt to the environment and more creativity.

Clinical Psychology Patient Symptoms

Psychology is the function of the human brain, and it is the reflection of objective reality in the human brain. After a person is sick, as long as they are conscious, they also carry out psychological activities in the mind at all times. This is self-evident, but the patient and Healthy people's psychological activities are both the same and different, because healthy people's psychological activities mainly adapt to social life, and patients just cannot adapt to the performance of social life. Healthy people's psychological activities are mostly directed to the external objective environment, and the patient's psychological Activities are more directed towards themselves and disease. The general psychological activities of patients are as follows:

Subjective feeling in clinical psychology

The so-called subjective sensory abnormality refers to the subjective feelings and physical changes due to the patient's reaction, role changes and psychological conflicts after the illness.

Psychological illusion diagram

There is a difference between the test and normal. In addition to the reaction of the patient, the main reason is that the patient concentrates his energy on work and study before the illness. The psychological activities often point to external objective things and pay little attention to his physical condition. Once the patient is sick, he will immediately turn his attention to himself. He is even extremely sensitive to his breathing, heartbeat, and gastrointestinal motility. As there is less physical activity, the environment is quiet, and the sensitivity is improved. Not only is he sensitive to external stimuli such as sound, light, temperature, etc., but even his posture and posture seem to be very clear. For example, I may feel that the pillow is low, I may feel the quilt sink, and I complain that the sheets are not flat, and I always turn over from time to time. Some will experience abnormalities in spatial perception. The normal person thinks the delicious taste, but it may cause the patient's dislike; the normal person thinks the beautiful color, but the patient feels annoying; even the normal person's laughter can cause the patient's boredom.

Clinical Psychology , Mood

State of mind is a contagious, relatively weak and lasting emotional state.

The patient is ill, it is an unpleasant emotional stimulus, and it is easy to form a bad mood. If you are in a bad mood, you will see what is not pleasing to your eyes and listen to what you are upset. Based on this state of mind, anxiety, anger, or depression are prone to occur. Therefore, some patients get angry every time, lose their temper and even become willful. In this patient's emotional response, men are mostly noisy and trivial, and women are mostly depressed and crying. Especially when there are changes in the condition, or when special examinations are made, or when preparing for surgery, the emotions are more irritable, causing anxiety, fear, poor sleep, and inability to eat. Others turn inner irritability into external behaviors, such as sudden grooming, some haircuts and shavings, some writing a lot of letters, some gorging to eat, or some looking out the window for a long time, and others Covered head sleeping and so on.

Passive dependence in clinical psychology

Passive dependence is a mental state that is submissive and coquettish.

Once a healthy person becomes ill, he or she will naturally be cared for by his family and surrounding comrades. Even members who are usually not at home or at a high level in the unit will suddenly rise to the center of being cared for. At the same time, through self-suggestion, the patient himself has become soft and less vibrant than before. At this time, the patient generally becomes passive, obedient, coquettish and dependent, and his emotions become fragile and even childish. As long as your loved ones are present, do nt let others do what you could have done. What you could have eaten ca nt be eaten even after persuasion. People who have always had a strong sense of independence have become less assertive, and people who have always been arrogant have become less confident . Even those who are accustomed to leadership and dominance are now taking orders from medical staff to follow suit. At this time, their love and sense of belonging increase, hoping to get more visits from relatives and friends, hoping to get more care and warmth; otherwise they will feel lonely and self-pity.

Self-esteem

People's sense of value and self-esteem are closely linked. Self-esteem and self-reliance are good qualities of a complete personality. When a person becomes ill, his sense of self-worth will be bruised, and self-esteem will be hurt to varying degrees. At this time the patient is more sensitive than usual, and every little thing needs to be checked. Some people are uncomfortable when they are called by their first names, especially when bed names are used instead of names.

Psychology diagram

Concerns over clinical psychology

Suspicion is a self-negative suggestion. Such unfounded guessing will affect the correct judgment of objective things. When patients become sick, they often become nervous, and when they hear others whisper, they think they are talking about their illness, and they feel that their condition is serious or even not saved. Persuasion to others is also dubious, and even misinterprets others' opinions. He also has a lot of doubts about medication and injection treatment examinations, worried about misdiagnosis, worried about taking the wrong medicine, and getting the wrong injection. Some infer medicine and infer prognosis based on their incomplete knowledge of medicine and pharmacology. They are particularly worried about the side effects of the drug, worrying about a few percent or a few thousandth of a medical error or accidentally landing on themselves. A little abnormal feeling in a part of the body makes random guesses. In addition, some of them will worry about increasing the family's financial burden due to illness and affecting their future.

Some patients have low education and lack of scientific knowledge of physiology and pharmacology. They often use feudal superstition to understand their abnormal physiological functions. When the course of the disease was not consistent with his own expectations, he fell into a wild thought, and could not live forever.

Clinical Psychology Anxiety, Fear

Anxiety is a type of worry and fear that is unknown. It can come from both the anxiety about the illness itself and the clinical manifestations of the disease itself. Take inpatients, for example, when someone is not in the hospital, they are anxious to be admitted to the hospital; once they are admitted, we go to the patient's introduction and see some of the surrounding patients to see the condition of the patient, can not help but have a sense of terror, as if facing a huge threat. At the moment of life and death. They are very nervous mentally, afraid of pain, surgery, fear of sequelae, death. Even seeing the white coat and snow-white wall, there will be a feeling of solemnity and silence. They want to be checked for the disease, but they are afraid of the test; they want to know the diagnosis result, but they dare not look at the diagnosis result, and they have many psychological contradictions. Some of them repeatedly inquired about their condition; while others avoided it, they were worried.

Clinical psychology loneliness

A sick man left his family and industrial unit and was admitted to a hospital ward, where strangers were all around him. The doctor only spoke a few words to the patient during the rounds once a day, and the nurse gave injections and medicines regularly, and rarely talked. This way the patient naturally feels lonely.

Patients living in small wards and extroverted patients are more prone to loneliness. A patient who had undergone a bone marrow transplant was originally living in a large ward. At this time, his condition was stable, his general condition was good, and his movement was free. The patient was aseptically isolated before the operation and moved to a small ward. Unexpectedly, the patient felt lonely, afraid and isolated from the world. He became insomnia and refused to eat. As a result, he died of extreme failure without surgery.

Expectant psychology

The expectation of the patient is the pursuit of a beautiful imagination that points to the future. After being ill, not only has his body changed, but he has also suffered psychologically. Therefore, both acute and chronic patients want sympathy and support, earnest treatment and care, and anxious for an early recovery. This expectation motivates patients to seek medicines everywhere and to seek medical advice. They are pinned on highly skilled doctors, pinned on the innovation of nursing work, pinned on the invention of new prescriptions and wonderful medicines, and imagined the emergence of medical miracles. In short, it is looking forward to recovery and to survival. Those patients who expect higher standards often regard the comfort of their families and the encouragement of doctors and nurses as a sign of amelioration of their condition, or even a sign of recovery; when their condition worsens, they look forward to an improvement after the peak; when they have entered a dangerous period, I also look forward to the possibility of resurrection and return to danger.

Psychology diagram

Clinical Psychology Helplessness, Self-pity

This is an emotional state of helplessness, helplessness, grief and self-pity. This emotional state often occurs in patients with poor prognosis or life threatening. It is caused by the loss of psychological stress, the loss of self-worth, and the decrease in self-confidence. It is a kind of negative psychology. Seligman believes that when a person thinks that he has no control over the situation, And when you are powerless to change it, you feel helpless.

In the state of helplessness, patients often show feelings of self-pity and self-pity: "Why do I have this disease?", "Why God can't live with me". Out of despair, sometimes the patient loses his temper for no reason, sometimes he is stiff and indifferent, as if a calamity is coming, and some always look in the mirror to say goodbye to themselves, look back on the past, and nostalgia for life.

Clinical psychology

Patients who have just become ill often admit that they are ill, and often consider themselves healthy. This mental state is the result of long-term healthy habits. People need some mental preparation to adapt to the environment. Although they arrived at the hospital, they have not yet entered the "patient role". Patients with this mental state are not conducive to cooperating with treatment and are not conducive to recuperating and recuperating, so medical staff should try to make the patient shorten the process.

However, once a patient adapts to the patient's life, he often develops the habit of the disease, that is, injections, taking medicines, and doing things according to the doctor's advice become his own behavior model, always thinking that his illness requires long-term rest and treatment. Even when the physical illness has recovered, the mind is always "weak". So patients should be discharged from the hospital and not willing to be discharged. This is because they have become accustomed to the role of the patient psychologically and physically, that is, the patient's life mode such as being more dependent, less active, and less brain-moving.

Clinical Psychology Success Challenge

Two major events that occurred in 1980 changed the orientation and position of clinical psychologists. The first was the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." Science is defined as an applied discipline, but there are a series of challenges behind success. When people think about mental health and mental disorders, they pay more and more attention to their background, level of adaptation, severity, individual characteristics, and related physical diseases. Clinical psychology and psychiatry must speak in the same voice, but the realization of this ideal requires effort, and only this step can help to understand complex issues such as psychological disorders.

However, such efforts can come at a significant price. For example, reapply the expression "psychological disorder" that disappeared in 1937. It was initially replaced by "dysfunction" and then replaced by "behavioral deviation" and "abnormal behavior". The problem is that people have not yet reached a consensus on the term "psychological disorder". In addition, there is no consensus on the classification of psychological disorders. Various classifications of psychological disorders lead to many theoretical and practical difficulties. For example, when a disease is classified into a certain category, it may be arbitrary due to co-morbidity between various psychological disorders. Differences in clinical psychological characteristics threaten the validity and reliability of diagnosis, but current psychiatric diagnosis is undoubtedly useful at least in the field of clinical psychology. It can help us understand psychological disorders from a psychological perspective, and it can help us combine basic psychological research with clinical practice. Therefore, Wiediger and Trull pointed out that we should tentatively adapt the psychology of metamorphosis to the operating standard of biological orientation characteristics. (Note: Widiger, T. AandTrull, TL, 1991, Diagnosis and Clinical Assessment, inAnnual Review of Psychology, 42.) In addition, the diagnosis of psychology means consideration of dimensions. Normality and abnormalities or abnormalities exist in the form of a continuum, which is related to the psychology. Other classifications of disorders are different.

Psychology diagram

The development of health psychology has laid a new opportunity for the development of clinical psychology. Clinical psychology traditionally deals with psychological disorders, but it also deals with psychological disorders that are associated with so-called dysfunction and physical illness. In this sense, the psychological dynamic model has hardly proposed a comprehensive explanation of the psychological and physical interactions, or a psychological technique that strengthens the intervention of these effects, but the latter later developed into behavior correction and two-way feedback technology, which promoted behavioral medicine. The emergence of serotonin is seen as a cross-disciplinary integration of biomedicine and behavioral science, while a behavioral health major has emerged, the purpose of which is to maintain health and prevent psychological disorders. A new discipline, health psychology, encompasses these developments and establishes new professional fields. Some people think that the difference between health psychology and clinical psychology is that the former cares about health and the latter cares about disease, but this view is one-sided, because firstly, there is no strict boundary between health and disease, and health is not just that there is no disease; Second, if clinical psychology deals with mental illness, and health psychology deals with mental states caused by physical illness, then we tend to mind-body dualism. Third, although health psychology emphasizes human health, literature analysis shows that Part of it is about mental illness.

The future of clinical psychology

Psychodynamic models played an important role in the early days of clinical psychology and were replaced by behaviorism in the 1950s. In modern times, different models have coexisted: psychological dynamic models, humanism, behaviorism, cognitiveism, and so on. These very rich and often incompatible models to some extent mark the emergence of a pre-paradigm or sub-scientific stage. If forcibly integrating different models into one model, this is an unrealistic and unscientific approach. Therefore, the development of clinical psychology should be based on the spirit of seeking common ground while shelving differences, and should continue to receive reasonable knowledge from different fields and construct its own theoretical model. The practice of clinical psychology requires rich knowledge and a scientific attitude. It is necessary to adopt new solutions to old problems by creating models, and clinical psychology should use a variety of methods to solve increasing problems. So clinical psychology should be considered as a social science. As an applied discipline, clinical psychology must start with reducing pain, improving health, and protecting people's healthy lives. ^[3]