letters
Where are all the scientist practitioners?
ROGER Paxton’s article ‘Survival of the biggest’ (May 2006) raises
important issues for the future of clinical research in the NHS. His
vision of clinicians linking with existing local research
collaborations certainly makes sense, but has implications for both the
training and selection of new psychologists. Doctoral level training in
clinical psychology was introduced in the UK in 1996. At this time,
many courses embraced the scientist practitioner model and despite its
limitations (see for example Cook & Coyne, 2005) it remains the
core philosophical approach of training in the UK. Trainees now spend
longer with each core client group and there is a heavy emphasis on
research methods, systematic literature reviews and critiques,
culminating in the production of a doctoral level dissertation in the
final year of training. Competition is ferocious and each year the
postgraduate experience and qualifications of the hopeful applicants
surpasses those of the previous year.
This rigorous training is designed to equip newly qualified clinical
psychologists to function efficiently as scientist practitioners in the
NHS, with its current focus on evidence-based practice. Given this
focus, it is somewhat surprising that the impact of this rigorous
training regime has yet to be formally evaluated. However, doctoral
level training in clinical psychology does not appear to have resulted
in prolifically publishing NHS clinicians. The vast majority of papers
in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology continue to come from
university-based clinicians. Indeed whilst there has been a marginal
increase in the inclusion of NHS clinicians in university-based
studies, there appears to have been a drop in studies from clinicians
who are solely based within the NHS – there was only one in 2005.
In reality there is very little opportunity for the considerable skills
of modern clinical trainees to be put into practice in most NHS posts.
The clinical workload and associated waiting-list pressures ensure that
research rapidly becomes a low priority for all but the most motivated
clinicians, many of who quickly migrate back to academic posts to
satisfy their inclinations. Basic audits, service evaluation and other
low level, unpublished projects represent the sole research output for
the majority of practising clinicians working in the NHS.
This leaves the profession in an interesting position. We are all
familiar with the plight of psychology assistants who would undoubtedly
make excellent clinicians; they have all of the necessary clinical
skills in abundance, but may never even gain an interview, due to a
solid rather than outstanding academic record (many applicants these
days even have PhDs). I am not saying that academic rigour is not
important for the profession. Of course it is. But all potential
trainees should already be more than familiar with the scientific
method of enquiry and basic research methods, having gained a good
bachelors degree in psychology. I fear that as the precious training
places get snapped up by the brightest and best young research brains,
the ultimate reality of an NHS clinical job may mean disappointment for
both newly qualified trainees and ultimately, their clients.
Sallie Baxendale
Department of Clinical & Experimental Epilepsy
Institute of Neurology
Reference
Cook, J.M. & Coyne, J.C. (2005). Re-envisioning the training and
practice of clinical psychologists: preserving science and research
orientations in the face of change. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61,
1191–1196.
Worries for the newly qualified
I HAVE been concerned by the increasing absence of advertised
clinical psychology posts in the Appointments Memorandum, and by the
absence of comment from the Society. A quick scan of the June
Appointments Memorandum shows only 41 clinical psychology posts; of
these a maximum of 10 appear to be appropriate for applications from
newly qualified trainees. According to the Clearing House for
Postgraduate Courses in clinical psychology on the Leeds University
website the number of training places in 2003 was 539.
Traditionally, trainees would await the publication of the June
Memorandum as this is the optimum time for applying for posts. But for
this year’s cohort of trainees the employment prospects seem somewhat
bleak. This state of affairs appears to have been caused by the current
financial issues facing the NHS. In the London area there are
suggestions and rumours that posts and services are being cut, funding
being either withdrawn or frozen. It may be that this is
a temporary state of affairs driven by political expediency and that posts will appear
again in the same numbers as before.
However, there are also suggestions from some that clinical
psychologists have priced themselves out of the market. The success of
the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) in gaining increases in pay
for psychologists has not been met with universal acclaim from other
professions in the NHS. There is evidence of services looking for
opportunities to create generic therapy posts employing people from
other professions who have completed the necessary post-graduate
training. These individuals can be employed on band 6 or 7 in the
Agenda for Change structure, with no clear provision for them to be
moved up to band 8. Should these issues continue they have serious
implications for the place of clinical psychologists in the NHS.
If clinical psychologists are seen as being too expensive then the
current pay freeze may provide some with reasons to look elsewhere for
therapy provision. If and when funding returns to its previous levels
it may be that services will by then no longer see the necessity of
employing clinical psychologists, having managed without them for a
period of time. In this scenario it would seem to be very important for
the society and the DCP to take action now to investigate the current
situation and to reiterate the added value that clinical psychologists
bring to services.
N. Smith
Institute of Psychiatry
London SE5
Editor’s note: See also p.396.
Globalisation is Good?
OWUSU-BEMPAH’S attack on psychology as an instrument of social
control (‘The ‘isms’ – Psychology’s collective unconscious’, Letters,
June 2006) does a disservice to the issues he attempts to address, due
to his clear anti-Western bias.
Firstly, as recent influxes from former Soviet bloc countries
indicates, migratory patterns to the UK are mainly due to the
opportunities that our prosperous nation affords, rather than our
‘plundering and exploitation of the rest of the world’ (as Owusu-Bempah
claims).
Secondly, it is also wrong to equate globalisation with ‘plundering and
exploitation’. Globalisation is the ‘integration of economic
activities, via markets’ driven by ‘technological and policy changes –
falling costs of transport and communications and greater reliance on
market forces’ (Wolf, 2004, p.19). For countries with the appropriate
institutions in place (an important qualification) globalisation brings
greater prosperity. Sadly, the grinding poverty in many African
countries is not due to the exploitation of the West, but to endemic
corruption (Harford, 2005).
Thirdly, countries that have attempted to overthrow the ‘evils’ of
capitalism have produced the world’s worst tyrannies, whereas market
economies are associated with greater democracy and individual freedom.
Higher levels of market integration are associated with greater levels
of prosociality within societies (Henrich et al., 2005), because market
economies require trust and reciprocity for their operation. In
America, greater metropolitan prosperity is associated with more
positive population attitudes towards homosexuality and immigration
(Florida, 2002; cited in Noland, 2004), and globally – with the
exception of sub-Saharan Africa – countries with the most liberal
attitudes towards homosexuality also have the most positive attitudes
towards globalisation (Noland, 2004). Opposition to globalisation is
largely due to people who oppose the spread of liberal values, rather
than to economic concerns (Arnett, 2002).
However, in any market economy social control is also an important and
necessary element, because (e.g.) laws and policing are needed to
protect individual property, including intellectual property.
Therefore, psychologists clearly have roles to play, both helping and
advising those who fall foul of the law, but also in giving advice to
the agents of the law (or serving the interests of ‘dominant groups’ if
you prefer Owusu-Bempah's more loaded interpretation). Unfortunately,
the best tools that psychologists have are not necessarily perfect
tools, and so it is important that we turn a critical eye upon
ourselves. However, it is important to maintain a sense of perspective,
and to condemn Western psychologists as the unthinking agents of
oppression is to lose all sense of perspective.
David Hardman
Department of Psychology
London Metropolitan University
References
Arnett, J.J. (2002). The psychology of globalisation. American Psychologist, 57(10), 774–783.
Harford, T. (2006). The undercover economist. London: Little, Brown.
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S. et al. (2005). ‘Economic man’ in
cross-cultural perspective: behavioural experiments in 15 small-scale
societies. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 28, 795–855.
Noland, M. (2004). Popular attitudes, globalisation, and risk. Working
paper 04-02, Institute for International Economics. Available online at
www.iie.com/publications/wp/wp04-2.pdf
MR Owusu-Bempah’s
despairing comments (‘The isms – Psychology’s collective unconscious’,
June 2006) made me consider my own part of the discipline. As an
occupational psychologist, Mr Owusu-Bempah might view me as a
handmaiden of the dominant interests he argues psychology serves.
However, operating in the area does not necessarily mean we are all
unthinking and unaware of the issues he raises in the way his letter
seems to suggest. In fact, I have always been embarrassed by the
largely uncritical nature of the discipline I make my living from. As a
young academic I tried to do something to rectify this. With my
colleague Robin Fincham, we have for the last 20 years produced texts
which included more ‘critical’ perspectives.
However, this critical content has meant that while they have sold well
on MBAs and undergraduate business degrees, their usage on occupational
psychology courses has been minimal.
Sadly, and as Mr Owusu-Bempah’s ‘dominant interests’ argument would
predict, there actually does appear to be an almost universal absence
of any ‘critical’ perspectives on occupational psychology Masters
courses. This has a number of implications. At a very basic level more
exposure to critical perspectives might help MSc students understand
more about what shapes the nature of work in modern market economies.
Paradoxically, this lack of any coverage of critical perspectives, for
example, of professions and professionalisation, also means candidates
usually have a lack of understanding of the nature of what they appear
to value most – becoming Chartered. This leads to an uncritical
acceptance of the importance of Chartership and essentially
disconnectedness from broader economic, political and social realities.
A critical perspective of professions would see Chartering as simply a
strategy for competing with other groups, which might or might not be
successful. And that simply defining ourselves in this way, in our
marketplace, does not necessarily entail others accepting our
self-definitions – and rewarding us accordingly. Or that what in part
might determine the success of this strategy is how close an occupation
is to the central functions of capital.
Similarly the uncritical acceptance of competences, now at the heart of
modern occupational psychology, appears to preclude a consideration of
the broader social and economic functions they serve. Little appears in
the occupational psychological literature which, for example, uses or
even mentions the Marxist perspective of competences – seeing their
emergence as a particularly insidious form of control, reflecting the
reconstitution of managerial labour in more market terms and acting as
a replacement for career as the principal means of controlling
managerial labour.
The absence of any critical coverage also makes reading essays from
candidates (also white, largely female and middle class), as depressing
as Mr Owusu-Bempah’s dealings with his doctorate clinical students
appear to be. These normally consist essentially of uncritical,
right-wing, managerial discourses, devoid of any real critical insights
into the subjects being considered.
To remedy the faults Mr Owusu-Bempah identifies blindly serving
dominant interests, I would (even as a practitioner) ague that MSc
courses are not academic enough, they do not appear to provide students
with the key critical frameworks (Foucault, Marx, Braverman, etc.) they
need genuinely to understand the discourse of occupational psychology
and be more reflexive in their working lives.
Peter S. Rhodes
Worthing
Effects of violent pornography
IN their letter in the May issue, Burr et al. express their concern
at the Society’s response to a Home Office consultation paper on
internet pornography. They state: ‘We do not dispute that psychopaths
may be kick-started into action by all manner of things, including
pornography. But there is no evidence at all that those not already
predisposed to such action will be similarly affected.’
Yet more than 20 years ago a series of experiments showed that exposure
to violent pornography increases the likelihood of aggressive responses
(summarised in Donnerstein, 1984). In a meta-analysis including 30
studies, Allen et al. (1995) found an effect size of r = .22 for the
impact of exposure to violent pornography on aggressive behaviour. It
is important to bear in mind that these studies involved only brief
exposure to violent pornography. The fact that measurable effects of
such limited exposure were obtained suggests that even small effect
sizes are not to be dismissed.
Furthermore, even short-time exposure to violent pornography is found
to increase endorsement of rape supportive attitudes (Linz, 1989). And
from their analysis on the link between pornography and sexual
aggression, Malamuth et al. (2000) concluded that there are ‘reliable
associations between frequent pornography use and sexually aggressive
behaviours, particularly for violent pornography and/or for men at high
risk for sexual aggression’.
To arrive at a balanced assessment of the risks of exposure to violent
pornography, it is not helpful to ignore or deny this evidence.
Barbara Krahé
University of Potsdam
Germany
References
Allen, M., D’Allessio, D. & Brezgel, K. (1995). A meta-analysis
summarizing the effects of pornography II. Human Communication
Research, 22, 258–283.
Donnerstein, E. (1984). Pornography: Its effect on violence against
women. In N.M. Malamuth & E. Donnerstein (Eds.) Pornography and
sexual aggression (pp.53-81). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Linz, D. (1989). Exposure to sexually explicit materials and attitudes toward rape. Journal of Sex Research, 26, 50–84.
AS a member of the Society and a libertarian activist involved in the
Backlash campaign formed to oppose moves to outlaw sado-masochistic
pornography, I was saddened to read the letter from Michael Beattie
(‘Restricting the rewards for cruelty’, June 2006). Firstly, he uses the emotive ‘think of the children’ tactic which often
indicates that the argument has no real substance. Secondly, he makes
the patronising claim that those involved in S&M were often –
otherwise why bother to say this? – abused as children rather than
being able to accept that this is just what some people enjoy doing
(rather like train spotting or morris dancing). I am sure that some
were abused and some were not: just like the rest of the population.
Thirdly, he confuses consensual adult sexual activity including the
making of pornography with the abuse of children and the production of
images which are simply evidence of a crime in the same manner as CCTV
footage of a mugging would be.
Although I am sufficiently worldly-wise to have a genuine knowledge of
what is involved, S&M is not my personal cup of tea. However, as a
libertarian I strongly support the right of people to engage in
whatever consensual activities they choose and oppose those who think
that they know what’s best for others.
Nigel Meek
Libertarian Alliance
t
ON WHOSE BEHALF?
AT the end of the Society’s response to the Home Office consultation
on extreme pornography referred to in the letter from Burr and
colleagues in the May issue, it says that the response was prepared by
Carol Ireland and Fiona Wilks-Riley on behalf of the Society. It is not
at all clear what this means.
Who asked them to write it? Does it just represent their own opinions?
Or did they draw together all comments made by people who had found the
consultation on the BPS website and found time to respond? Did they
systematically ask anyone else? Was their draft reviewed by anyone
else? Who gave the authors the authority to speak ‘on behalf of the
Society’? Who is entitled to speak ‘on behalf of the Society’?
John Raven
Christina Docchar, Policy Response Unit (PSU) Manager, replies:
All responses are now handled by the PSU, which was established in
spring 2005. Consultations are posted on the Society’s website and
circulated to Boards and chairs of subsystems likely to be interested
in the topics. The PSU then relies on the cascading of the information
to the membership of those groups. Once interested parties have
identified themselves to the office then the mechanism for the response
can be decided – usually this involves two or more subsystems working
together to produce as rounded a response as possible. The final draft
is then sent to the relevant Board chair for clearance, sent on under a
formal letter and logged on the Society’s website.
More information on the process can be found at: www.bps.org.uk/b6bt.
The Unit is still in its infancy and any suggested improvements are
more than welcome – e-mail [email protected].
Humanistic psychology
IN the last issue you printed a letter from Dorothy Coombs which
contained the following: ‘Is psychology a “science”? If so, what will
happen to the humanistic and psychodynamic approaches?’
I don’t know about the psychodynamic, but the humanistic approach is
totally committed to the practice of science. It does, however, have a
broader definition of science than do some others. We would include the
hermeneutic approach, the phenomenological attitude, the experiential
way of doing research, and so forth. As one of the pioneers of these
more open and responsible ways of doing science, I would not like to
abandon it at any time.
John Rowan
Links with the West Bank
THANK you for publishing Anna Costin’s interesting article
‘Psychology in Gaza and the West Bank’ (May 2006). I recently went to
the West Bank as part of an ongoing EMDR Humanitarian Assistance
Programs (HAP) project, at the invitation of East Jerusalem YMCA. As
Anna Costin notes, there is a tremendous need for further training,
especially at a postgraduate level, and for the development of academic
and clinical links. Colleagues from Palestine, the HAP project and the
UK have good clinical links, and we are currently developing academic
links, including the exploration of PhD research.
In practical terms, we are in the process of translating some
psychological training and clinical assessment materials into Arabic
and would welcome contributions from psychologists and others as part
of this process. We would also welcome interest from people in
addressing the impact of ongoing social and political situations on
cognitive structuring and the implications of this for CBT and other
psychological interventions.
The contributions are not one way. I learned a great deal during my
time in Palestine, not only about the psychology of ongoing trauma but
about the importance of learning from others and, in a joint project,
enabling people to address issues of ongoing traumatic stress.
The experience gave ‘community psychology’ a new meaning.
Philip Dodgson
Sussex Partnership NHS Trust
BORN TO BE BRIGHT?
IN the June issue John White argued that the pioneers of
intelligence testing were to varying extents influenced by Puritan
views, with their emphasis on predestination. Strangely, however, he
failed to mention the foremost originator, Alfred Binet, who had
produced in 1905 the first version of his test. This was to be modified
in 1908 and 1911 and then to be taken up enthusiastically by Burt and
by Terman, each of whom had a translation made for their individual
purposes.
Binet’s views were completely opposed to those whom White mentioned.
Thus in 1909 he noted that ‘Some recent philosophers have given their
moral approval to the deplorable verdict that an individual’s
intelligence is a fixed quantity, one which cannot be augmented. We
must protest and act against this brutal pessimism; we are going to try
to demonstrate that it has no foundation whatsoever’ (p.141). Binet
died two years later so his anticipated programme never came to
fruition. A further 25 years were to elapse before the environmentalist
Iowa Group, headed by Harold Skeels, took up the challenge.
It is important for historians of psychology to be aware of both
hereditarian and environmentalist origins of intelligence testing which
is, of course in itself agnostic to both extremes.
Alan and Ann Clarke
109 Meadway
Barnet
Reference
Binet, A. (1909). Les idées mordernes sur les enfants. Paris:Flammarion.
A-level – Where’s the weakness?
WHILST we would agree with Richard E. Rawles (Letters, June 2006)
that there are weaknesses in the foundation for further study of
psychology in the current A-level specifications, we disagree strongly
with his diagnosis of what these are.
We are certain that he and his colleagues have experienced candidates
who discussed predictable aspects of forensic and atypical psychology
at interview, but we can assure him that this is not because of
weaknesses in the specifications.
At our own centre we do not teach forensic psychology, preferring to
concentrate on core areas, such as social, cognitive, biological, child
development, and perspectives. Discussion with colleagues at other
centres supports this finding.
It may surprise Richard to know that a large proportion of the
specification focuses on research methods, in addition to critical
evaluation of a range of experimental work embedded within core areas
of psychology. This ranges from recent neurophysiological studies to
seminal studies in social psychology such as Milgram’s. Candidates must
also design and carry out their research, as well as report it using
conventional scientific format. This could be an interesting topic for
discussion at interview: What did they study? Why? What were the
limitations encountered?
It is a great pity that Richard and his colleagues have been unable to
access the undoubtedly broad and detailed knowledge of their
candidates. We wonder how important the expectations of the
interviewers are as an influence on performance. We are also confident
that most candidates who have studied A-level psychology could ably
discuss this with him in the context of the scientific method.
Karen Barnacle
Head of Psychology
Amanda Jones
Psychology teacher
Bablake School, Coventry
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
Bernard Marriott, Operations Directorate Manager, replies: As
far as possible, mailings produced by subsystems are included with The
Psychologist. However, there is a physical limit on the amount of
material that can be accommodated, and the schedule for The
Psychologist does not always fit in with the requirements of
subsystems. As members may join up to 25 subsystems, and also be a
member of their Branch (not to mention subscribing to up to 10
journals), it is not always possible to combine mailings to
individuals. Direct mailings, paid for by advertisers, are sent
separately. We do monitor outgoing Society mail and will continue to
reduce the numbers wherever feasible.
There will shortly be scope for replacing certain mailings by e-mails
direct to members. The software is currently being tested, and we hope
in the next few months to be able offer members the opportunity to
receive subsystem notices by e-mail. An announcement will be made in
The Psychologist when this is available.
(Please note that some pictures may have been removed for copyright reasons)
BPS Members can discuss this article
Already a member? Or Create an account
Not a member? Find out about becoming a member or subscriber