Reflections on Psychology

A patient tells me, half-apologetically, about “talking to AI” between our sessions, and finds it soothing, calming, and reassuring. It is available at three in the morning when the dread arrives. It never tires, never sighs, never glances at the clock. It says the right things.

Throughout the course of my career, many potential patients seem confused about what differentiates clinical psychologists from psychiatrists. In brief, here are some of the important distinctions.

Look-up the term “psychology” in a textbook and usually you will find “the study of behavior and mental processes.” But what kind of study, and what aspects of human life does a psychologist examine?

Years ago, when I was a full-time college professor and even as Director of Training for a graduate program in Clinical Psychology, students approached me with the question: “Isn’t psychology just common sense?” Most often, I would smile, shake my head “no”, and bring up the following ideas.

Many years ago, a prominent psychologist asserted that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory.”

While an ethical, effective, and professional counseling, psychotherapeutic, or psychoanalytic relationship has to be asymmetrical – the patient is paying for the practitioner’s professional expertise – both patient and psychoanalyst have much more in common than they do not: “everyone is much more simply human than otherwise.”

Sophisticated statistical analyses indicate that the working relationship between patient and psychotherapist is the most important factor in outcome – specific therapeutic techniques or “schools of thought” are much less important than the connection experienced within the therapeutic dyad.

I have been seeing patients for over 40 years using an approach oriented by humanistic psychology, interpersonal relations research, mother-infant observational studies, developmental psychology across the life span, personal construct psychology, and relationally oriented theories.

How people differ in the way they adapt to (or have trouble coping with) problematic circumstances emerges in a relational context; the most important situations in life are interpersonal and involve other human beings!

When patients contact me to make an initial appointment, I tell them about my beginning process.