Apprenticeship clinical training in academia

Abstract

The value of a pluralistic educational philosophy for the training of clinical psychologists is evaluated. A more intensive faculty‐student relationship is proposed whereby students have frequent contact with professors over several courses. When a faculty member teaches several courses to graduate students and provides a process and experiential focus in these classes, the process increases the clinical skills of students and produces high levels of satisfaction. Strategies for introducing process learning in the classroom are outlined, including personal reaction papers, use of student projective protocols, an experiential group psychotherapy course, and team‐taught seminars that model the use of free associative thinking.