A Publication of A CALL FOR REVOLUTION! The Society for General Psychology Is It Time for the Third Force Division One in American Psychology? of the American Psychological Association by George W. Albee, PhD, ABPP INSIDE THIS ISSUE Editorial ..........................4 Presidential Address of Division 1, the Society for General Psychology Presented at the 114th APA Convention, New Orleans, LA, The Science-Practice Divide: Saturday, 12 August 2006 Weinberger...................5 Dr. Albee finished writing his Presidential Address in June 2006, shortly before he died. It Campbell......................7 was his last formal contribution to the field of psychology. The address was distributed Shedler........................9 in printed form at the convention, and the time scheduled for his talk was devoted to Garry & Loftus .............11 reminiscences by his friends and colleagues. Worrell ......................13 Lilienfeld & O’Donohue..15 Mio .......................... 18 VERVIEW OF A DISASTER Any intel- Oligent person with an open mind can learn Research Cooperative........19 how wrong is the current approach of our society to mental/emotional disorders: Candidates Respond..........20 1. Most of these conditions are not diseases caused by biological defects or brain pathology. From the SGP President......23 These false explanations are pushed for economic, political, and/or power motivations. Call For Papers.................24 2. Individual one-to-one treatment, even when successful, has little or no effect on the rate of the Announcements & Awards...25 condition in the population. We have learned from Public Health that no disease or disorder has APA Council Report............27 ever been treated out of existence. Despite this knowledge most of medical education, medical Connections: Stam on Theory..30 research, medical treatment focuses on individual treatment. Little attention is paid to prevention. The Style We Love to Hate...33 3. Psychiatry is twice wrong. It is wrong about cause and wrong about treatment. RetroReview: Wm James....36 4. Psychological practice, tied irrevocably and fi- What They’re Reading........39 nancially to the errors of psychiatric diagnosis and pharmaceutical treatment, is ultimately doomed. George Albee Exec Committee Report......41 ARLY IGNORANCE A major problem for the early clinical psychologists was the Fellows Committee Report...44 Enear-total lack of experience and lack of understanding of psychopathology by the field of psychology. Tribute to George Albee.....45 Undergraduates majoring in psychology took a course called abnormal psychology. Most of the course content was a mix of weakened psychoanalytic theory of the neu- On the Lighter Side...........49 roses (hysteria, depression, neurasthenia, psychasthenia, multiple personality) and tradi- Volume 41, No. 2 - Fall 2006 The General Psychologist Page 1 Albee: Time for the Third Force? tional psychiatric theory of the functional psychoses (dementia the social worker’s interview and the report of the admitting praecox, soon changed to schizophrenia, and manic-depressive psychiatrist. All of these reports were presented at the case con- psychosis) and a smattering of organic conditions like epilepsy, ference staff meeting, where a diagnosis was assigned by the senile psychoses, and mental retardation. The abnormal psy- chief psychiatrist, and treatment was planned. Treatment usu- chology class was always taken to visit a nearby state mental ally was electric shock or drugs for the psychotic, talking therapy hospital to stare in awe at selected catatonics, paranoids, and for the less severe. hebephrenics chosen by the staff to “put on a good show.” As Psychologists, especially young clinicians-in-training, were students we thought psychiatry had reliable knowledge. eager to do psychotherapy. The acute shortage of psychiatrists We made the profound error of accepting this psychiatric sometimes resulted in the assignment of “case work” treatment “knowledge” as valid. Little did we realize that psychiatry knew by social workers. Only very gradually were psychologists al- nothing of the causes of psychosis and little of other functional lowed to do psychotherapy—and always under the supervision disorders. of a physician. Any physician—even an internist or neurosurgeon The whole development of clinical psychology was distorted would do. and misdirected by our acceptance of psychiatric beliefs as val- As psychologists-in-training we read books by Freud, Carl id. Rogers, Rollo May, Eric Fromm, and others, about psychothera- During the latter part of the py. Some older psychologists 19th century, medicine had rebelled against the psychiat- made real progress in under- ric domination of treatment standing the causes of disease. and began to practice psycho- A major figure, Rudolf Virchow therapy independently in the in Germany, had led to the community. This group began understanding that most dis- actively striving to obtain cer- eases had a specific cause, usu- tification and licensing—the ally a specific microorganism right to practice independently. or organ defect. Each disease Medicine and psychiatry fought also had a specific treatment. these efforts. After years of Progress in medical diagnosis struggle—state by state—psy- and treatment expanded rap- chologists finally won the legal idly as scientific investigations right to practice psychotherapy, were developed. if they were licensed. To be li- censed they had to have a PhD An unfortunate exception (or EdD) from an accredited was the field of psychiatry. A university graduate program, real mental disease—syphi- where they had to be trained lis of the brain, called general also in research, complete a paresis—was identified as a research dissertation, and pass separate disease, and it was comprehensive exams in a found that fever had the effect range of psychological sub- of arresting the disease. For a jects. This process slowed the time, persons with general pa- time for completion of training resis were deliberately infected and limited the number avail- with malaria—the resulting fe- able for independent practice. ver arrested the brain syphilis. Eager for more practitioners, Success in finding the cause APA was pushed to drop lan- and treatment of one genuine mental illness spurred hope that guage requirements, doctoral dissertations, and to approve pro- other causes and cures would be discovered. Such hopes have fessional schools. A long series of struggles and changes led to not been fulfilled for most deviant mental conditions. new programs in (often) free-standing professional schools with (mostly) part-time practitioner faculty, few research require- SYCHOTHERAPY The burning issue for clinical psychol- ments, and a new degree: the PsyD, Doctor of Psychology. The Pogists in the late 1940s and 1950s became psychotherapy. desire to become psychotherapists has drawn large numbers The tranquilizers—thorazine and reserpine—appeared in the of young people to these PsyD professional programs. Today mid-to-late 1950s. Before that, psychiatric treatment usually in- PsyD students and annual graduates outnumber new PhDs in volved some form of convulsive shock (electric, metrazol, insu- America. lin) for severe symptoms. (For a short time pre-frontal lobotomy But medicine (psychiatry) does not give up because of a was used on thousands of unfortunates.) few lost battles. By continuing legally and officially to classify Psychotherapy for the less severe was common. Psychologists, all mental problems as medical illnesses with causes located mostly young, and recent arrivals in Veterans Administration (VA) in bio-physical defects—and requiring psychology to agree to hospitals and clinics, and at community clinics, were restricted to this classification in order to be paid—psychologists have been diagnostic testing chores. As a VA clinical psychology trainee in trapped in a hopeless cul-de-sac. the late 40s I gave “patients” the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence To be paid for their therapy currently, psychologist’s “pa- Test, the Rorschach Inkblot test, the Human Figure Drawing Test, tients” must be given a diagnosis from the current Diagnostic and other individual tests chosen from a dozen available. My and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. written test report was appended to the case-file, together with Insurance companies, HMOs, etc., not therapists, decide how Volume 41, No. 2 - Fall 2006 The General Psychologist Page 2 Albee: Time for the Third Force? many visits a patient may make (and be supported by insur- The current drive for people who are in practice to become ance payments). The average number of visits is six, clearly not drug prescribers is a matter of survival. Society has been sold enough for most traditional relationship psychotherapy which, the fallacy that mental/emotional disorders are all brain diseas- in earlier times, was often weekly for a year or two, often longer. es that must be treated with drugs. The only way for psychol- So psychotherapy, the favorite strategy for the independent ogy practitioners to survive is to embrace this invalid nonsense. practice of clinical psychology, no longer assures an adequate The APA governance (Council) has been taken over by people income. But the large number of students being trained as indi- in practice. vidual therapists continues. How will they make a living? Let us not misunderstand. Psychologists will get the legal au- thority to prescribe. They have the strong support of the power- UREKA: A SOLUTION! Suddenly, a solution