Originally published: . Volume 11, No. 4. Source pages: 3.
– Letter to the Editor – A Professional Crisis
We are all absorbed in our personal and professional struggles to deal with Covid 19. But there is another crisis, less dramatic but very real, that cries for our attention.
Consider what will become of “professional” psychology if the university, including academic psychology, continues its collapse into a job preparation enterprise.
Academic psychology, from its outset, was focused on research—a good thing—and training students who looked forward to becoming professors like their mentors.
The post WW II development of professional psychology programs and academic psychology’s focus on research obscured the centrality of and interest in human nature as central to the liberal arts.
A rot set in.
Academic psychology forgot the liberal arts mission of undergraduate education: contributing to what Cardinal Newman called “cultivation of the intellect for its own sake.” Its aim became preparing them to apply to graduate programs.
Professional schools of Psychology emerged, committed, not to the liberal arts, but to the preparation of practitioners.
My professional life has always included both full time university teaching and clinical practice. I view the rise of professional schools of psychology and the addiction to prescription privileges as cultural diseases.
As the university collapses into a credentialing store, professional psychology will devolve into something like chiropracty or naturopathy or life coaching.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.