Early history of clinical psychology (1896-1949).

The beginning of professional clinical psychology has often been traced back to August 1949, the date of the American Psychological Association (APA) Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology held in Boulder, Colorado (Baker & Benjamin, 2005). Of the more than 70 resolutions that emerged from the Boulder conference, the most important one was the unanimous recommendation to train clinical psychologists as both researchers and practitioners. This approach has come to be known as the scientist–practitioner or Boulder model of training (Raimy, 1950). The Boulder model, however, was far from the first graduate training model for clinical psychology. Since the turn of the 20th century, numerous academic and applied psychologists, as well as psychological organizations, had proposed models guiding the training and education of clinical psychologists (Farreras, 2001, 2005). These early training proposals attempted to define the nature of clinical psychology, created standards for the emerging field, revealed tensions between psychology and psychiatry, and eventually helped to establish the identity and legitimacy of clinical psychology (Baker & Benjamin, 2000). With the establishment of membership requirements to psychological organizations; codes of ethics; and certification, accreditation, and legislative efforts, the proposals were illustrative of psychologists’ attempts to professionalize the budding field of clinical psychology. These proposals also created an image of scientific status that would set clinical psychologists apart from other mental health practitioners (Farreras, 2005). This chapter discusses the early history of clinical psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)