Developing theories of change in clinical psychology training

Abstract

Family therapists and clinical psychologists alike have struggled for many years with the task of integrating therapeutic ideas and practices in a coherent, useful way. Rather than tread the modernist path of searching for the universally correct integrated model, this paper sets out a framework to support trainee clinical psychologists in addressing this task by reflexively developing their own theories of change to fit with their own experiences, learning, clients and contexts. Methods of guiding this process without being prescriptive are described, along with feedback from both trainee and qualified clinical psychologists who have used this approach.

Developing Family Therapy Skills on a Shoe String Budget: A Peer Supervision and Training Approach

“…With practice and reflection, we identified a similar theme to what students experienced as described in Atkin (). We were surprised by how much we already knew.…”

Integrating Family Therapy Training in a Clinical Psychology Course

“…Atkin (2007) has provided a generic, pragmatic and reflexive strategy for assisting doctoral clinical psychology trainees to develop a conceptualisation of the process of change from a variety of learning contexts (scientific, clinical practice and personal experience). An informal pilot evaluation indicated positive benefits for the clinical psychology trainees (and interested trained clinical psychologists).…”

“…So it was not surprising that an electronic literature search using EBSCO host yielded thousands of publications. A search limited to the period between 1988 and 2008 using the following terms -family therapy, training, clinical psychology, and traineesyielded 14 results of which only 5 were directly relevant to the topic of family therapy training for clinical psychology trainees (Karamat Ali, 2007;Atkin, 2007;Carr, 2007;Rhodes, 2008;Stanton, 2005).…”

“…Recent papers that have focused specifically on clinical psychology trainees have described the content and process of the family therapy component delivered to students (e.g., Atkin, 2007;Carr, 2007;Rhodes, 2008). Atkin (2007) has provided a generic, pragmatic and reflexive strategy for assisting doctoral clinical psychology trainees to develop a conceptualisation of the process of change from a variety of learning contexts (scientific, clinical practice and personal experience). An informal pilot evaluation indicated positive benefits for the clinical psychology trainees (and interested trained clinical psychologists).…”

Thematic review of family therapy journals in 2007

“…The Journal of Family Therapy contained a special feature on innovative training practices edited by David Cottrell (2007). The papers contained creative training exercises on such topics as interdisciplinary and interagency learning (Aggett et al, 2007), identifying support systems (Dutta and Finlay-Musonda, 2007), exploring the position of the other (Partridge et al, 2007), polyphonic dialogue for introducing systemic-social constructionist ideas (Tseliou, 2007), meditation (Lord, 2007b), the use of self (Boston, 2007) and development of self in family therapy (Woodcock and Rivett, 2007), experiential learning of research skills (Stratton, 2007), family therapy and clinical psychology (Atkin, 2007;Carr, 2007), and diversity, race and culture (Ali, 2007;Mills-Powell and Worthington, 2007).…”