Antonio E. Puente: Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Independent Practice

Presents Antonio E. Puente as the 2011 winner of the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Independent Practice. "For his decades of efforts to enhance the recognition of psychologists in providing health care services, through his work with the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Panel to develop and maintain appropriate CPT codes for the breadth of professional practice; for his willingness to participate in litigation establishing the expertise of neuropsychologists to testify in court about their findings; for his tireless work in cross-cultural assessment relative to criminal trials; for his leadership of professional societies in clinical neuropsychology; for his promotion of legislation and policy at all levels of government; and for his countless other contributions to the enhancement of independent practice in psychology. Antonio Puente is a far-thinking visionary who freely shares his knowledge to improve the quality of psychological practice and the reimbursement system that attests to the worth of the profession. He is the very embodiment of the psychologist for whom this award is intended." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).     

Interrogating the ethics of operational psychology

Commissioned amidst allegations of collusion between American Psychological Association officials and Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense officials involved in the enhanced interrogation programme, the July 2015 Hoffman Report documented a decade of collusion between American Psychological Association and Department of Defense officials in unethical national security interrogations. However, interrogation support is but one of numerous areas where psychologists are directly aiding military and intelligence operations, an area known as operational psychology. The ethical issues posed by the larger field of operational psychology have received little public discussion apart from apologia by operational psychologists themselves. To stimulate public review of operational psychology, leaders of the movement to remove psychologists from national security interrogations convened, in September 2015, a group of experts to work towards a consensus set of principles to guide future discussion. Participants included psychologists, physicians, and social scientists; military and intelligence professionals; and attorneys, ethicists, and human rights advocates. The discussion also drew upon years of dialogue between participants and military health and intelligence professionals. The workshop produced “The Brookline Principles on the Ethical Practice of Operational Psychology,” with implications for the profession of psychology and for civil society.     

Development and current status of counselling psychology in Taiwan

This article details the three stages of counselling psychology’s development in Taiwan, including pre-legislation, legislation and post-legislation. In pre-legislation stage, a brief historical review of the growth of counselling and guidance is introduced, which is the root of the contemporary counselling psychology. The process of the Psychology Act’s legislation is described in legislation stage and the relationships between counselling teachers and clinical psychologist are also discussed. In the post-legislation stage, the licensure system, training programmes, main professional organizations, work settings, and the major opportunities and challenges for the counselling psychology field are presented. In addition, the article refers to data from a national survey of 124 counselling psychologists to provide a profile of the counselling psychologists in Taiwan.     

How counselling psychologists are perceived by NHS clinical psychologists

The aim of the study was to obtain data reJlecting NHS clinical psychologists' perceptions of counselling psychologists. A 19-item questionnaire was devised and sent by post to 303 clinical psychology departments throughout the United Kingdom in July 1995. 161 replies were received from areas including mental health, community care, general hospital, neurological rehabilitation, learning disabilities and combinations of these. Results showed considerable confusion among clinical psychologists around the identity and competencies of counselling psychologists. Much of this confusion seems to be attributable to a lack of information regarding the content of training and a lack of awareness that counselling psychologists are now chartered under the auspices of the British Psychological Society. The survey suggests that counselling psychologists should work to clarify their identity and increase communication with professional colleagues before their contribution to the provision of psychological care can be recognised.     

Assessing ‘good’ qualitative research in the work psychology field: A narrative analysis

This paper considers how work psychologists define ‘good’ qualitative research in the work psychology domain. In addressing the assessment of quality in work psychology research, we draw on 22 in‐depth interviews with work psychologists about their current practices and expectations around qualitative research. Using narrative analysis, the various plots and narratives that constitute how interviewees understand good qualitative research are identified. The implications of the use of these narratives for both how quality is understood and the use of qualitative research in this area are addressed. Drawing on Weick's concept of sensemaking as a theoretical framework, it is argued that the narratives identified enable the construction of a hegemonic understanding of what is good methodological practice within the work psychology discipline. The implications of this for the work psychology field and the methodological practices of work psychologists are considered.     

Mental health teaching to UK psychology undergraduates: report of a survey

One of the limitations on developing more progressive applied psychology training is the teaching received by students at undergraduate level. In this study, we focus on the provision of teaching about mental health or its equivalents (e.g. abnormal psychology and clinical psychology) on UK undergraduate psychology programmes. Most students who go on to train as clinical psychologists will have received teaching on modules like these. A survey questionnaire was sent to 109 university departments which might offer a module in mental health mental health module and 348 individuals who might be involved in such modules. The majority of programmes responding offered a mental health module, which was available each year as an optional subject. A number of findings on the content and delivery of the modules are reported and a number of recommendations are made including more involvement from practitioners and service users. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

英美法系中的心理学专家证人

专家证人指的是根据法庭的要求,依靠专业知识和技术,就法庭审案过程中所涉及的有关本专业的内容,向法庭提供的有科学依据的书面报告并直接出庭作证的各学科的专家。心理学专家证人就是心理学专家作为专家证人进行出庭作证。英美法系与我国实行的大陆法系存在着差异,该文希望通过系统地介绍英美法系心理学专家证人的发展历史及作用、心理学专家证人的工作程序、存在的争议、已有的实证研究等,为国内法律界和心理学界开辟一个新的视角,并探讨心理学专家证人在我国司法系统实施的可能性     

The Australian Psychology Workforce 1: A national profile of psychologists in practice

Existing workforce data on Australian psychologists are limited and data that exist are problematic. An online survey instrument was developed to profile psychologists including demographics and work characteristics including setting, role, service location and client type. A total of 11,897 completed the survey (response rate 48%) and a subset of these (N = 9,330) who held full registration were included in the current investigation. Participant demographics show a high (75%) proportion of females in the workforce which is particularly evident in the younger age range. Participation in the workforce was high (68%), with main psychology jobs spread relatively equally between the public and private sectors. Over a quarter of participants held a second psychology position, with the majority of second jobs being in private practice. For both first and second jobs the largest proportion spend their time providing counselling and mental health interventions one‐to‐one to adults. One quarter provide services in non‐metropolitan regions, a higher rate than previously reported. Specific population groups such as culturally and linguistically diverse and indigenous clients were prominent in workloads. This study provides a comprehensive profile and provides a rich data source for further exploration of the characteristics of specific groups within the workforce.     

Criminal Justice and Community Psychology: Our Values and Our Work—The Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue of The American Journal of Community Psychology originated from the Society for Community Research and Action Criminal Justice interest group, with a goal of exploring the work of community psychologists intersecting with criminal justice research, practice, and policy and shaped by our shared values—equity, collaboration, creative maladjustment, social justice, and social science in the service of social justice. In this introduction, we discuss the socio‐historical context of the special issue, followed by an outline of the special issue organization, and brief summary of the included papers. Across 13 papers and an invited commentary, we see the ways in which community psychologists are: (1) delivering and evaluating services, programming, or other supports to address the needs of system‐involved people; and (2) working to improve the systems, structures, and interactions with units of criminal justice systems. Across these two sections, authors highlight the guiding role of our values to influence change within and outside of criminal‐legal systems.     

Training in health psychology: An international look

With the progression of health psychology as a new field in psychology specific training programs are more and more needed. A survey of the training situation of health psychology in Northern America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand highlighted a lack of formalized training programs in most countries except the United States and Canada, as well as an enormous variety between countries on standards of training, and on the differentiation of health psychologists from clinical psychologists.

For the qualification of health psychology as an independent psychological discipline a plea is made for international standardization of quality control and suggestions for the content of formalized training programs in health psychology are given.     

Family therapy and clinical psychology

The results of a survey of 111 clinical psychologists in the Republic of Ireland along with some comparable data from US and UK surveys were used to address a series of questions about the link between family therapy and clinical psychology. Family therapy was not a clearly identifiable sub-specialty within clinical psychology in Ireland. Family therapy theoretical models were used by more than a quarter of the Irish sample to conceptualize their work but by less than a tenth of US and UK respondents. In all three countries about a tenth of treatment time was devoted to the practice of family therapy. In Ireland, the use of family systems models, family assessment interviews and family therapy was more common within the child and family specialty than within the mental handicap or adult mental health clinical psychology specialties. The experience of live supervision and participation in family or couples therapy were important formative factors in the development of some clinical psychologists. Further training in systemic consultation, particularly in situations where an abuse of power has occurred, was identified in the survey as a priority area for continuing professional development. The evolving relationship between family therapy and clinical psychology is discussed in the light of these findings.     

Legal and psychological bases of expert testimony: Surveys of the law and of jurors

This article reviews the basic rules of evidence and procedure that provide the basis for the introduction of expert testimony into court. Second, it reviews some of the findings of social psychology regarding expert testimony, primarily the ways in which the structure of society affects what information will reach the court and what is the readiness of the factfinder to deal with that information. Finally, it reports original data on jurors' assessments of a variety of witnesses (viz. physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, chemists, document examiners, polygraph examiners, police, eyewitnesses, firearms experts, and accountants and appraisers). Jurors' differential assessments of the different experts and differences among juror subgroups are reported and some explanations for a few of those differences are tested.     

Family‐based Intervention for Legal System‐involved Girls: A Mixed Methods Evaluation

The increased proportion of juvenile court‐involved girls has spurred interest to implement and evaluate services to reduce girls’ system involvement. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a family‐based intervention by using a dominant sequential mixed methods evaluation approach. First, we examined quantitative data using a quasi‐experimental design to determine whether the family‐based intervention reduced recidivism among court‐involved girls. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to construct statistically equivalent groups to compare one‐year recidivism outcomes for girls who received the court‐run family‐based intervention (n = 181) to a group of girls on probation who did not receive the intervention (n = 803). Qualitative interviews (n = 39) were conducted to contextualize the quantitative findings and highlighted the circumstances that family‐focused interventions for court‐involved girls. Girls who received the program had slightly lower recidivism rates following the intervention. The qualitative findings contextualized the quasi‐experimental results by providing an explanation as to the girls’ family circumstances and insights into the mechanisms of the intervention. Results highlighted the importance of family‐focused interventions for juvenile justice‐involved girls. These findings have practical and policy implications for the use interventions—beyond the individual level—with adjudicated girls and offer suggestions for ways to improve their effectiveness using a community psychology lens. In addition, this paper includes a discussion of evaluating of juvenile court programming from a community psychology perspective including strengths, challenges, and considerations for future work in this area.     

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY WITHIN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

The state of psychology in China at the present time is discussed in the context of trends, continuities, and discontinuities in development of the discipline over the last 60 years. The work of psychologists was severely disrupted between 1966 and 1976 by the activities of the ‘gang of four’. Although there is in effect a lost generation of psychologists, teaching and research have been vigorously re-established in the colleges and universities. In the Institute of Psychology, which forms part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 90 psychologists are carrying out research primarily in developmental psychology, perception, physiological and pathological psychology, and psychological theories and systems. The Chinese Psychological. Society resumed activities in 1977, and Acta Psychologica Sinica reappeared in 1979 with a circulation of 10,000 copies. Psychology in China is international in its perspective, and Chinese psychologists have welcomed many recent opportunities to establish contacts with colleagues in other countries.     

Les représentations philosophiques de la relation entre l’« esprit » et le cerveau des enseignants-chercheurs de psychologie : quelques implications

The history of psychology has been marked by strong methodological, theoretical and epistemological controversies. In this paper, we evaluate the hypothesis that these well-known controversies are often implicitly supported by philosophical, metaphysical and probably religious oppositions. The focus of our investigation concerns the classical opposition in philosophy between dualism and physicalism, more specifically the complex relationship between the brain and the mind. One hundred and sixty-six teachers and researchers (30 in clinical psychology, 37 in cognitive psychology, 31 in development psychology, 38 in social psychology and 30 in neurosciences) from 8 French universities have accepted to participate in this survey by responding to a questionnaire made of 17 questions. Data were analyzed using factor analysis technique and the results of the principal component analysis (PCA) revealed four main factors that are more likely to define accurately the philosophical profile of each sub-discipline. The main result of this survey is that philosophical and metaphysical positions, at the foundations of psychology, clearly distinguish and oppose the five studied sub-disciplines. At one extreme, there are cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists who are strongly physicalist. To the contrary, clinical and social psychologists exhibit more dualistic representation. Developmental psychologists occupy an intermediate position between these two extremes. Finally, we analyzed the implications of the participants’ philosophical representation differences, from an epistemological and clinical/practical point of view. The important point is that these philosophical and metaphysical oppositions are largely implicit. Indeed, inside our community, it is very rare, if not exceptional, that they are explicitly involved in the theoretical or epistemological conflicts, which exist inside our discipline. However, it is probable that they play a massive role in our debates, a role all the more important, as we are largely unconscious of them. The current study is the first to tackle such an important topic by describing more accurately the philosophical representation of scholars in major sub-fields of psychology. By revealing such deep metaphysical oppositions, we hope to shed a new light on the origins of these persisting conflicts in psychology.     

Sport Psychology Foundations,Organizations, and Related Resources

SUMMARY

The purpose of this article is to introduce psychologists and counselors who work in schools to the field of applied sport psychology. We begin with a brief history of how applied sport psychology developed in North America and other parts of the world. Landmark events such as the development of conferences, professional organizations and scholarly publications are described. This is followed by a discussion of the breadth of services that are typically provided by sport psychologists. The third section examines some of the current issues related to the training of sport psychologists. The final section introduces the reader to organizations, journals, texts, and on-line resources so they may learn more about the theory, research, and practice of Sport psychology.     

How special are the specialties? Workplace settings in counseling and clinical psychology in the United States

How special are the specialties? Although clinical and counseling psychology each have distinctive origins, past research suggests their potential convergence across time. In a survey of 5666 clinical and counseling psychologists, the similarities and differences between their workplace settings were examined during early-, mid-, and late-career phases to explore the distinctiveness of the two specialties. Overall, clinical and counseling psychologists reported markedly similar workplace settings. However, some significant differences remained; a greater proportion of counseling psychologists reported working in counseling centers, while a greater proportion of clinical psychologists reported working in medical settings. In addition, during late-career, substantially more counseling and clinical psychologists worked in independent practice contexts than in community mental health centers, medical settings, academia, or university counseling centers. Findings are discussed in relation to the ongoing distinctiveness of the two specialties and the implications of this for training and service in the field of professional psychology.     

Counselling Psychology in Canada

Counselling psychology in Canada has experienced tremendous growth and greater recognition within the last 30 years. However, there is little empirical research on the practice of counselling psychology in Canada and the characteristics of Canadian counselling psychologists. We administered a 74 item questionnaire to 79 counselling psychologists who were members of the Counselling Psychology Section of the Canadian Psychological Association, achieving a 35.4% response rate. The survey asked various questions organized under the headings of: Background Information, Theoretical Orientations, Professional Activities, Training and Career Experiences, and Future. Overall, these Canadian counselling psychologists seem to see the discipline as moderately different from clinical psychology and from counsellor education, and are largely satisfied with their choice of career in counselling psychology. Results further indicate that independent practice is the most common work-setting and that respondents spend a large share of their time providing individual, non-career related, counselling/psychotherapy of primarily a rehabilitative/treatment-oriented nature. A strengths-focused approach was also highly valued by the sample. The development of the field, distinctive characteristics of Canadian counselling psychology, the place of counselling psychology in the Canadian health care delivery system, credentialing, professional organizations, education and training issues, allied professions, opportunities for the field, and threats to the field are also discussed.     

The Australian Psychology Workforce 4: An analysis of psychologists in private practice providing Medicare‐funded services

There have always been independent private psychology practitioners in Australia, yet in the past payment of their services was largely by a user‐pays model. The introduction of Medicare Benefits for patients, under the Enhanced Primary Care program in 1999, and Better Access in Mental Health Care in 2006, along with Government‐funded mental health initiatives such as Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care introduced in 2001, has provided an alternative funding model for independent private psychological services. Introduction of these and other Government‐funded programs has raised questions about the responsiveness of the psychology workforce to meet the changing demands for psychological services created by these reforms. This study aimed to profile the characteristics of 3,587 independent private psychologists who provide services to clients under these schemes by analysing their responses to the Australian Psychology Workforce Survey. Of the 44% of psychologists completing the survey who indicated that they had a Medicare Provider Number, only 61% were in private practice as their main job. The remainder conducted services for Medicare‐funded clients as part of a private practice in a second job. The demographic characteristics, work roles, client groups and income of psychologists with Medicare provider numbers are reported.     

Bridging the divide in work and organizational psychology: evidence from practice

This study explores the extent to which work and organizational (W&O) psychology practitioners use evidence, how they apply it to the everyday contexts in which they work, and the types of barriers they encounter in so doing. It adopts a mixed methods approach involving the administration of a survey to a UK sample (N = 163) of W&O psychologists and a series of semi-structured interviews (N = 25) exploring in greater depth how evidence is applied in practice. Findings reveal that practitioners consult a wide range of different types of evidence which they employ at various stages of engagement with client organizations and that this evidence is pressed into service in the pursuit of solutions which are both acceptable from the client perspective and consistent with the scientific standards underpinning professional knowledge and expertise in W&O psychology. Barriers to evidence-use were mainly practical in nature, concerning issues around managing the client–consultant relationship and the particularities of implementation context, both of which were shown to influence evidence utilization. The study contributes to current debate on the extent to which W&O psychologists adopt an evidence-based approach and provides a valuable and much called-for empirical insight into the enactment of the scientist–practitioner model in W&O psychology.