Perspectives in Psychology: Integration in Clinical Psychology

Abstract

In the medical field measurements of a patient’s blood pressure, body temperature, and pulse rate are routinely taken, indicative of a discipline with generally agreed-upon foundations. Nothing of the kind exists for clinical psychology because there is no agreed-upon foundation for its discipline. Q-methodology and its body of theory offer such a discipline and, as a consequence, can offer a measurement for “vital signs” as significant for clinical psychology as the familiar “vital signs” of blood pressure, temperature, and so forth are in medicine. The proposed measurement is described and its implications indicated. A reminder is given that most current clinical psychology remains in the Aristotelian mode of categorical thought, and that clinical treatment is largely “add-on” mediation.