A survey of employment in psychology and the place of personnel without the PhD.

A preliminary survey of the distribution of psychologists in the United States.

“…ECENTLY attention has been given to gathering census data on the nation's psychologists and to classifying them according to their fields of employment. An excellent survey by Black (1) in 1948 provided a picture of employment in psychology, the data being classified according to general areas and specific positions. Whereas the Black study, based on the full biographical entries in the 1948 APA Directory, presented a breakdown in terms of percentages for the entire country, the present survey classifies the 1950 data from a new viewpoint: the geographical distribution of psychologists employed within the continental United States.…”

Clinical psychology comes of age.

“…However, these degrees were not differentiated according to the specialty. Black (1949) had conducted a survey of employment in psychology and noted in the American Psychologist that "psychology is now primarily an applied rather than an academic subject" (p. 38). He found that 43% of the graduate students at that time were enrolled in a clinical sequence, and 54% of employed psychologists were in nonacademic positions.…”

A brief history of clinical psychology.

“…With Morton Prince, he did much to stimulate interest in the phenomena of dissociation, feeling as he did that it was a fruitful method of investigation of personality functioning. Early in his career he recognized the value of a clinical approach which led him "whenever possible to approach the mind by way of its pathology" (77, p. 20).…”

“…On the other hand, currently unresolved issues face the profession today. The problems on which there are differences of opinion both in psychology and in other professions include psychotherapy as a task of the psychologist and the nature of the relation of psychology to psychiatry and medicine (7,13,54,55,72,87,94), the nature of the relation of psychology to social work (33), the question of the advisability of certification and licensure (31,47,60,109,112,117), the question of the desirability of private practice (38,39), the position and function of non-Ph.D.'s in clini-cal psychology (15,20,35,67,69,98), and the "imbalance" in psychology between scientific and professional demands (63,87,88,89). Not only do these problems have roots in the past, but they are also an expression of the period of professionalization of large segments of psychology today.…”