How to Become a Clinical Psychologist

Getting a Foot in the Door

Alice Knight

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781583912423
• eBook ISBN: 9781135452988
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Based on information gathered from assistants, trainee clinical psychologists and clinical psychology course directors across the country, How to Become a Clinical Psychologist includes:

• information on work experience
• advice on job applications and interviews
• details of research projects and training
• guest chapters dealing with reflections from trainees and professional issues.

This guide is the first of its kind and will be an essential companion for anyone interested in pursuing a career in clinical psychology.

1	Introduction

The aim of this book is to offer information and advice for anyone interested in pursuing a career in clinical psychology. This information and advice has been gathered from assistant psychologists around the country based on their personal experiences of trying to get into the field of clinical psychology and of working as an assistant psychologist. It also incorporates some advice from current trainee clinical psychologists on different courses in Chapter 8 and from a number of course directors at the end of Chapter 6.

You will also find two guest chapters that enhance the information provided in the rest of the book. Chapter 7 reports on the initial findings from an ongoing research project relating to Clin.Psy.D course selection. These findings support the more qualitative information gathered in the rest of the book. Chapter 9 provides a detailed description of the Affiliates Group of the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) of the British Psychological Society (BPS). It explains how it could be a useful port of call for further information leading on from topics discussed in this book.

By combining these elements the overall purpose of this book is to act as a self-help text offering both support and practical advice by learning from the experiences of others. It is not intended as a direct guide to entering the profession. As one participant pointed out: ‘there isn't a structure on how to get into clinical psychology like other careers such as law’. Another also highlighted that ‘many people on the clinical courses have never been an assistant psychologist anyway’ and that this is not the only route into clinical psychology, albeit the most popular. Another participant clarified this point by stating: ‘there is no magic formula to getting on to clinical psychology training once you graduate from your undergraduate course’.

This is all worth bearing in mind when using this book. It does not provide ‘the answer’ but it should help you to find your own route into this profession if it is the appropriate profession for you. Therefore, overall this book aims to provide a good starting point to help guide people in the right directions and get ‘a foot in the door’.

The book has been laid out to enable you to dip into the sections that you find relevant and useful for yourself at different stages. You will also find me popping up occasionally in cartoon form to help illustrate points and hopefully add a little humour.

THE QUESTIONNAIRES AND THE PARTICIPANTS

Three questionnaires were designed and sent to relevant participants across England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland and Eire operate their own system for training in this area but the information in this book is still likely to be useful for people there. One questionnaire was designed for assistant psychologists, one for trainee clinical psychologists and one for Clin.Psy.D course directors. Below is some information about the questionnaires and the participants.

Assistant psychologists

I was initially quite nervous about sharing this idea with fellow assistant psychologists, fearing a negative reaction, that it was in fact only me who thought this would be useful. However, I have in fact been delighted with the extremely positive feedback that I have received. I devised a questionnaire (see Appendix 1), which I sent to assistant psychologists across the country. I did this mainly through contacting various assistant psychologist groups, but I also put an advert in the British Psychological Society (BPS) monthly magazine The Psychologist, and in the monthly journal of the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) of the BPS, Clinical Psychology (previously known as Clinical Psychology Forum).

The questionnaire provided the opportunity for assistant psychologists to share their personal experiences to date of trying to pursue a career in clinical psychology and to give advice based on this. Each individual has obviously had different experiences and therefore advice did vary. As a result you may find at times that some advice is contradictory but this is reflective of the mixture of views that certain topics evoked. In order to deal with this I mainly tried to piece together the most useful pieces of information, much of which was repeated amongst many of the questionnaires. The contents of this book are set out within the general framework of this questionnaire with some important additions also included. It is therefore set around the information provided by the participants so it should be representative of their collective experiences and advice.

The response was tremendous and I received 124 completed questionnaires. With no national figures for the number of assistant psychologist posts it is unfortunately difficult to state what percentage of all assistant psychologists this reflects. The male:female ratio amongst the participants was 1:6. The average age of the participants was 26 years old (ranging from 21 to 46). Of the participants 51 per cent were in their first assistant psychologist post, 35 per cent were in their second, 11 per cent were in their third and 3 per cent were in their fourth. Based on my personal experience, these statistics appeared to be quite representative of the overall assistant psychologist population in the United Kingdom. There are however no statistics available for an accurate comparison to the overall population to be drawn.

Trainee clinical psychologists and course directors

As the writing of the book progressed I decided to send out two additional questionnaires in order to gather further useful information. The information gathered from them is represented solely in two of the chapters. Chapter 8 is dedicated to the responses gathered from current trainee clinical psychologists who completed the trainee questionnaire (see Appendix 2). This provides an opportunity for people at the next stage of their career path to reflect on their previous experience and give advice based on this.

Similarly, at the end of Chapter 6 there is some general advice gathered using a brief questionnaire (see Appendix 3) with a number of Clin.Psy.D course directors. This is in relation to the application process, which serves to enhance the advice provided by assistant psychologists that has been compiled within that chapter. Once again you may find that some of the information offered seems contradictory but I felt that it was important for me to include all angles presented in order for the information to remain as broad as possible. For more information on the outcome of both these questionnaires please consult the relevant chapters.

WHAT IS CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY?

This question seemed to fill the participants with dread as it is asked on the application form for the Clin.Psy.D courses. It is not as straightforward as it may appear, a fact reflected in the variety of answers provided in the questionnaires. The descriptions given did however follow some similar themes. These themes are also covered in the description below by Marzillier and Hall (1999) who defined the role of a clinical psychologist as follows:

Clinical psychologists are health care professionals who work in the fields of mental and physical health. Amongst their main activities are: (a) Psychological assessment, that is the use of psychological methods and principles to gain better understanding of psychological attributes and problems. The assessment of cognitive function (memory, intelligence, spatial abilities) following head injury, is one well-established example of psychological assessment. (b) Psychological treatment, that is the use of psychological procedures and principles to help others bring about change. There are many forms of psychological treatment, ranging from brief practical procedures for overcoming specific fears to lengthy and complex treatments such as some form of psychoanalysis. (c) Psychological evaluation, that is the use of psychological principles to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments or other forms of intervention. Clinical psychologists have been particularly involved in developing methods of evaluating psychotherapies and to a lesser extent physical forms of therapy.

Although these are the main activities of clinical psychologists, there are also others. Training of other professional staff, involvement in administration and advice, involvement in health service policies, and collaborative research are all activities that some clinical psychologists engage in as part of their work.

The important thing to note about the role of a clinical psychologist is that it is extremely varied and no one clinical psychologist does exactly the same job as another. As highlighted above, there are many different aspects of work that a clinical psychologist can get involved in and to differing degrees, with a variety of client groups and in a wide range of settings. The role of a clinical psychologist is also continuing to expand as the profession at large develops within the changing culture of the NHS. Therefore, there is no one ‘role’ of a clinical psychologist, but a number of roles, each carried out to varying degrees by individual clinical psychologists. When considering a career in clinical psychology it is therefore important to think about how appealing you would find these different roles, both individually and in combination. Below is a list of some of the roles that you may wan...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• How to Become a Clinical Psychologist
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Professor Graham Turpin
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 WORK EXPERIENCE
• 3 APPLYING FOR ASSISTANT PSYCHOLOGIST JOBS
• 4 ASSISTANT PSYCHOLOGIST JOB INTERVIEWS
• 5 THE ROLE OF AN ASSISTANT PSYCHOLOGIST
• 6 APPLYING FOR CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING: DEALING WITH THE PROCESS
• 7 APPLYING FOR CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING: THE CLEARING HOUSE RESEARCH PROJECT
• 8 REFLECTIONS FROM TRAINEES
• 9 THE DIVISION OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE AFFILIATES GROUP
• 10 CONCLUSIONS
• APPENDIX 1 assistant psychologist questionnaire
• APPENDIX 2 trainee questionnaire
• APPENDIX 3 course director questionnaire
• APPENDIX 4 Useful addresses
• References and bibliography