Clinical Psychology (summary)

Clinical Psychology

Witmer, L. (1907). Clinical Psychology. Reprinted in American Psychologist, 51(3), 248–251.

In the late eighties under laboratory of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania had conducted „psychological clinic” under the Witmer's supervision. Children from the public schools of Philadelphia and neighbor places have been brought to the laboratory by their parents or teachers. Those children were brought because of the inability to progress in school work as rapidly as other children or to manage under ordinary discipline. In the laboratory children were given physical and mental examination after which if it was needed, they would be sent to specialist.

To illustrate the operation of the psychological clinic, the example of case sent to laboratory from a city of Pennsylvania was taken. The 10 year old boy, without any apparent physical defect was brought by his parents because he had made so little progress in four years which he spent at school. The child seemed to be of normal intelligence except for the retardation in school work. Specialist confirmed the absence of mental degeneracy and of physical defect. Nothing more serious than a slight far-sighted astigmatism was found and the end conclusion of this examination was to return the child to the school with the recommendation to the teacher to develop child’s intelligence with required three months of observation to determine whether his condition was based upon an arrest of cerebral development or it is the result of inadequate methods of education.

Witmer’s attention was first drawn to the phenomena of retardation in 1889 where he at that time as a psychology student was called upon to give instruction in English to a boy who was preparing to enter the collage with remarkable deficiency in the English language. The boy compose correctly even simple sentence, making no distinction between present and past.

Witmer started with basics, teaching the boy as he was in the third grade. Witmer argue that is seemed to be due to the fact that he had verbal deafness, which he believed, was caused by defect of articulation. Witmer gave no attention to the subjects required in English for college entrance but focused on the drill in articulation and in perfecting his verbal audition  which resulted with a great improvement and the boy finally entered the college department of the University of Pennsylvania in the following year. Later in 1894-95 the boy was Witmer’s student and he was still struggling with his articulation, his written discourse and his verbal audition. Even though on the end, he managed to graduate, his deficiencies in language have never been entirely overcome. Witmer is arguing that if the boy was given adequate instruction in articulation in the early years of childhood he could have overcome his defect.

The second case was a fourteen years old boy who was brought to Witmer’s laboratory by his teacher. The boy was a chronic bad speller and his teacher was a psychology student by that time who thought that psychologist should be able through examination to find out the causes of deficiency in spelling and to recommend appropriate pedagogical treatment for its amelioration/cure.

According to Witmer this was the first case that science of psychology had ever addressed itself to the ascertainment of the causes and treatment of a deficiency in spelling. With this case, in March, 1896 the work of psychological clinic was begun. In 1896, Witmer proposed plan of organization:

• The investigation of the phenomena of mental and moral retardation by means of the statistical and clinical methods

• A psychological clinic supported by a training school for all the children who suffer such a retardation

• The offering of practical work to those engaged in teaching, medicine social work and training of normal and retarded children

• The training of students who wants to be experts in psychology-in cooperation with school system and with the practice of medicine

Probably the most important name connected with psychiatry today is Kraepelin, who was among the first to seek the training in experimental psychology afforded by the newly established laboratory at Leipzig. Even though clinical psychology is narrowly related to medicine it is quite as closely related to sociology and to pedagogy.