| dc.description.abstract | After returning from Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in Germany, Lightner Witmer
introduced the term Clinical Psychology in an article published in The Psychological
Clinic (Witmer, 1907). In this article, he explained:
While the term ‘clinical’ has been borrowed from medicine, clinical psychology is not a
medical psychology. I have borrowed the word ‘clinical’ from medicine, because it is the
best term I can find to indicate the character of the method which I deem necessary for this
work (p. 251).
Witmer, who later became one of the cofounders of the American Psychological
Association, thought that the goal of clinical psychology should be similar to that of
medicine to improve the human condition (Witmer, 1897). This notion significantly
expanded the boundaries of the young discipline, which was primarily defined by
experimental psychology to simply study the nature of psychological phenomena
(McReynolds, 1997). | en_US |
