Clinical Psychology - Criticisms and Controversies

Criticisms and Controversies

Clinical psychology is a diverse field and there have been recurring tensions over the degree to which clinical practice should be limited to treatments supported by empirical research. Despite some evidence showing that all the major therapeutic orientations are about of equal effectiveness, there remains much debate about the efficacy of various forms treatment in use in clinical psychology.

It has been reported that clinical psychology has rarely allied itself with client groups and tends to individualize problems to the neglect of wider economic, political and social inequality issues that may not be the responsibility of the client. It has been argued that therapeutic practices are inevitably bound up with power inequalities, which can be used for good and bad. A critical psychology movement has argued that clinical psychology, and other professions making up a "psy complex," often fail to consider or address inequalities and power differences and can play a part in the social and moral control of disadvantage, deviance and unrest.

An October 2009 editorial in the journal Nature suggests that a large number of clinical psychology practitioners in the United States consider scientific evidence to be "less important than their personal—that is, subjective—clinical experience."