PERTINENT FIELDS OF THE DISCIPLINE

1. Definition: 

Clinical Psychology is an area of psychology whose objectives are the explanation, understanding, interpretation, and reorganization of dysfunctional or pathological mental processes, individual and interpersonal, together with their behavioral and psychobiological correlates. Clinical Psychology may be identified with the psychological techniques used in counseling, diagnosis, therapy, or other kind of intervention on the psychological structure and reorganization of individuals and groups, in its problematic facets, its distress and maladaptive aspects, and in its interpersonal, social, and psychosomatics sides. Clinical Psychology is also finalized to interventions that aim to promote social, psychological, and biological well being and the related behaviors, also from a prevention perspective, in different clinical and environmental situations. Psychotherapy in its different strategies and methods constitutes the applied field that mainly characterizes Clinical Psychology, being the point at which request, available psychological knowledge, investigated phenomena, and functional methods mostly converge.

 

2. Pertinent Fields:

The research and teaching areas that are nationally and internationally identified and shared by the Council of teachers of Clinical Psychology in Italian Universities, are those that belong to the field of Clinical Psychology. The research and clinical intervention areas can be identified with the following competencies, classified as: 1. Clinical psychology; 2. Methods and techniques for research in clinical psychology; 3. Psychopathology; 4. Clinical neuropsychology; 5. Clinical psychophysiology; 6. Psychosomatics; 7. Psychology of addictive behaviors; 8. Forensic clinical psychology; 9. Psychology of sexual behavior; 10. Health Psychology; 11. Hospital psychology; 12. Rehabilitation psychology; 13. Psychotherapy.

 

3. Objectives:

Clinical Psychology is a specific field of competencies finalized to the research and intervention for the evaluation and prevention, the treatment and care of mental status and of dysfunctional or pathological systems, as well as to the improvement of behavioral and biological conditions influenced by individual, situational and systemic psychological variables. Amongst Clinical Psychology’s “objects” of study and intervention there are those processes that may restrict or disturb, sometimes seriously, the ability of intrapsychic interpersonal or group adjustment, thus creating situations of distress, suffering and deviance. The study and intervention on the “single case”, which is the person and his or her interactive context, constitute the elective field of Clinical Psychology.

 

4. Scientific criteria:

Clinical Psychology is a scientific discipline that aims to the control and falsification of its own assumptions, through criteria that are characteristic both of the natural sciences and the cultural sciences. It uses in a pertinent way both experimental and empirical methods, both semantic and historical-hermeneutical methods. The legitimacy and pertinence of the used criteria and of the methods is provided by the type of configuration of the investigated processes.

 

5. Models:

The tradition of research and intervention in Clinical Psychology is profitably enriched by a variety of models. Those models are based upon different epistemological and theoretical-methodological assumptions, and are characterized by fundamental differences in clinical and research strategies, which are nonetheless exposed to continuous scientific and cultural evolution.

 

6. Methods:

The techniques of Clinical Psychology are standardized in operational protocols, which are recognized and legitimized by different study, research, and clinical application traditions. The different diagnostic, evaluative, and therapeutic procedures are qualified as “psychological” based upon the used techniques and the pursued effects, despite the fact that psycho-biological or socio-psychological techniques are used as well. Amongst the methods used in Clinical Psychology, the subjective perspective of the clinical psychologist becomes particularly relevant as intervention technique. Emotional, cognitive, and relational systems built through the specific training and the clinical practice.

 

7. Autonomy and related fields:

Clinical Psychology is characterized by immediacy and relations with other scientific and professional disciplines. Such immediacy refers to some areas of medicine, such as neurology and psychiatry, of social sciences, of cultural anthropology, and of other historical, philosophical, and pedagogic disciplines related to human behavior. Despite the above-mentioned immediacy, Clinical Psychology maintains a peculiar and unique characterization of research, method, and meta-theoretical assumptions; as such, its competencies and operational practices do not belong to any other related field, nor to other psychological disciplines that are not finalized to the direct clinical practice.