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The Present Position in Clinical Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

William McDougall Major*
Affiliation:
A meeting of the Section of Psychiatry of the Royal Society of Medicine

Extract

In choosing a subject for this address, I have felt at liberty to go outside the boundary of psychiatry, and I propose to put before you a slight sketch of the present position in clinical psychology. First, it is necessary to explain what I intend to denote by this term. It may be said that there is not and cannot be any branch or section of psychology that can properly be so called; for the clinician necessarily deals with his patient as an entire organism, and cannot, in considering his mental life, abstract from any one part or function of the mind to concentrate his attention upon another; his psychology therefore must be concrete and must deal with the mind as a whole. This is true, and it follows from this truth that, when our knowledge of the human mind shall have become an adequate and well-established science, that science must be the theoretic basis for all who are practically concerned with the working of the mind, whether they are chiefly and immediately concerned with the normal mind or with minds in disorder.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1919 

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