ABSTRACT
The Predicament: Residual Technocracy Since the 1949 Boulder Conference on Training in Clinical Psychology, the prevailing assumption has been that the clinician should be trained as a scientistprofessional. That is, the would-be clinician rst is schooled by the University in scientic principles, standards, and research procedures. This schooling is his or her primary foundation for additional University clinical courses and for eld training in professional service. However, from the beginning this training model has been accompanied by antagonism between academicians and practitioners. Professors have decried clinicians’ straying form scientic rigor, both in use of subjective procedures and in their refusal to act in accordance with the statistically demonstrated superiority of computer-type prediction over the individual clinician’s own judgment. Likewise behavior modication over psychotherapy. In turn applied psychologists have protested the sterility and nonadaptability of laboratory techniques for clinical work, including evaluation of its effectiveness. The relationship between scientist and professional more often than not has been dichotomous rather than cohesive.
