Psychopathology Research June 2004 the NEWSLETTER of the SOCIETY for RESEARCH in PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
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Volume 14, Number 1 Psychopathology Research June 2004 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN PSYCHOPATHOLOGY President’s Column Teaching Graduate Psychopathology Daniel N. Klein State University of New York at Stony Brook hen Craig Neumann Psychology that are often dis- Wreminded me that my cussed informally, but rarely column for the newsletter was addressed in print, such as Editors due shortly, I was in the midst course requirements in doc- of preparing my graduate toral programs, keeping up on Diane C. Gooding, Ph.D. Department of Psychology course in Adult Psycho- the literature, and preparing University of Wisconsin pathology, a course that I’ve CVs. As part of SRP’s mission 1202 W. Johnson Street taught every other year for the is to help train future genera- Madison, WI 53706 608-262-3918, fax: 608-262-4029 past decade. I have also been tions of psychopathologists, E-mail: [email protected] enjoying Roddy Roediger’s and teaching graduate courses Craig S. Neumann, Ph.D. Presidential column this year in psychopathology is one of Department of Psychology in the APS Observer in the ways that many SRP University of North Texas Denton, TX 76203-1280 which he presents his members contribute to this 940-565-3788, fax: 940-565-4682 thoughts on a variety of top- process. It struck me that it E-mail: [email protected] ics related to academic might be of interest to discuss continued on page 2 Members’ Corner Associational processes in the language disturbances found in schizophrenia Brendan A. Maher Harvard University he history and evolution ground of how ideas and Tof research in psy- approaches that now seem chopathology and brain sci- obvious came to be estab- ence is often lost in the lished. For an initial glimpse, morass of empirical data. The it seemed The first attempts editors of the Newsletter sug- to study associational gested that it might be worth- processes in psychopathology while to consider the back- continued on page 4 1 PRESIDENT’S COLUMN ing very basic information about genetic — continued from page 1 linkage and association studies, some of the issues involved in teaching approaches to assessing neurotransmitter such a course here in this column. functioning in human subjects, and struc- tural and functional neuroimaging. Psychopathology is a broadly integrative field that draws from all the traditional Another significant challenge is balanc- areas of psychology, newly emerging areas ing the tension between breadth and such as cognitive and affective neuro- depth. Most courses are not long enough science, and other disciplines such as psy- to cover most of the major disorders in chiatry, epidemiology, genetics, and neu- detail, hence tradeoffs and sacrifices are robiology. At the same time, it has inevitable. Students have diverse inter- become increasingly methodologically ests and needs, and these can conflict, diverse, requiring some understanding of even within the same student. For exam- a number of approaches that are often not ple, clinical students require breadth for part of the standard graduate curriculum, their training as practitioners in order to such as neuroimaging, multivariate genetic have a basic understanding of a wide range modeling, and advanced statistical of clinical problems. However, their approaches to analyzing longitudinal data. training as clinical researchers might be While it was never sufficient to teach best furthered by studying a few disorders psychopathology from the perspective of a in greater depth. As most of us probably single discipline (or worse, a single theo- do, I try to strike a compromise, covering retical perspective within a single disci- most of the major disorders, but singling pline), the prerequisites for obtaining even out several for more extensive discussion, a superficial overview of the field have hoping that they will serve as exemplars expanded enormously in the past 20 years. of the kind of work that is being done on a variety of different disorders. Thus, one of major challenges is how to incorporate the necessary background Another facet of the depth versus breadth information in at least some of these areas issue is the degree of emphasis on descrip- into the course, given the time constraints tive psychopathology versus empirical available. In the program at Stony research on pathogenesis and mainte- Brook, students’ knowledge of areas such nance. Ideally, I think that psy- as genetics, neuropsychology, and neuro- chopathology should be taught as two biology varies, and many students require parallel courses; a traditional three-credit some background before they can make didactic course focusing on current theo- sense of current genetic and neurobiologi- ries and research on mechanisms and a cal research in psychopathology. Hence, one- or two-credit course focusing on I have found it necessary to devote four- descriptive psychopathology. The latter five hours early in the course to present- could be part of a diagnostic practicum or 2 clinical grand rounds where students readings. Of course, this depends in large could observe patients with a variety of part on the size of the class and the forms of psychopathology, although a nature of the students. My class usually good set of videotapes might also suffice. consists of about 20 students, so a variety Many clinical programs offer Assessment of formats are possible. However, I am or Intervention sequences that are struc- inclined to teach Psychopathology pri- tured along these lines, but the teaching marily through lectures. Despite the of Psychopathology tends to be more iso- many virtues of class discussions and stu- lated from clinical experience. This is dent presentations, they tend to limit the unfortunate, as clinical observation amount of content that can be covered. remains a rich source of research Psychopathology is a particularly con- hypotheses, and the empirical literature tent-rich course, and I feel obligated to has a much greater impact on students if cover a considerable amount of material, they can connect it to their experiences particularly since one of the goals of the and activities in the clinic. course is to help prepare the clinical graduate students to be competent practi- Most programs offer a separate course on tioners. I feel that graduate students child and adolescent psychopathology. should be immersed in the primary litera- This has the virtue of limiting the ture of their field, so I have never consid- amount of material that we have to know ered using one of the several textbooks or and pack into an already crowded course. edited volumes that might be appropriate However, it raises the question of where for a graduate class. I use the lectures to the boundaries between these areas lie. cover the basic information that I think As it becomes increasingly clear that psy- students should be familiar with (e.g., chopathology rarely appears de novo in clinical presentation and course, and epi- adulthood, the traditional split between demiological, genetic, psychosocial, and child and adult psychopathology appears neurobiological aspects of the disorder), more and more arbitrary. We may be at and use the readings to give them greater the point where it makes more sense to depth in selected areas and approaches. combine child and adult psychopathology Although I assign a few “classic” papers, courses into a single life span sequence, perhaps divided along the lines of inter- especially in the early part of the course nalizing, externalizing, and psychotic dis- dealing with conceptualizations of psy- orders, rather than to offering separate chopathology and research approaches, I courses in child and adult psychopathol- try to assign disorder-specific readings ogy. Unfortunately, there are strong bar- that have been published in the last two riers to change, and the curriculum gener- or three years, and to distribute them ally lags behind the field. among qualitative and quantitative reviews and empirical reports of clinical, Another set of issues concerns the class psychosocial, and biological research. format and the nature of the assigned Finally, a major problem that psycho- 3 pathology instructors face, although it is students, it can influence the research hardly unique to us, is how to keep up questions and directions that they pursue, with the field. Typically, our interests are both in graduate school and during their limited to one or two disorders, and then careers. Finally, it can provide students often to only a subset of the kinds of with a model that they can draw on when research done in that area. Even if we it is time for them to develop their own ignore the ever-growing number of spe- cialty journals, there are over a half-dozen graduate psychopathology and undergrad- first-tier journals in Clinical Psychology uate abnormal psychology courses. and Psychiatry, and a similar number of top-tier general psychology, medical, and MEMBERS’ CORNER science journals that we must keep tabs — continued from page 1 on. I try to cope with this by skimming the titles and abstracts of articles in the under controlled conditions were con- major journals on a regular basis and ducted at Heidelberg by Aschaffenburg keeping a running list of papers that (1896) , a colleague of Kraepelin. He was strike me as potentially important. My primarily interested in the reaction time approach to book chapters is, unfortu- of associative responses to tachistoscopi- nately, less systematic. I spend two busy cally presented sequences of single noun but rewarding weeks before the start of stimuli, rather than in the content of the class reading through the papers on my responses themselves. Reaction times of list, updating my lecture notes, and patient samples were reported to be choosing the assigned readings. longer than those of normal controls. The content of the responses was classified Attending SRP (and other meetings) is into three basic types, the objective type also useful in trying to stay reasonably up (responds to meaning), the constellation to date.