British Clinical Psychology and Society: A Commentary

Abstract

Comments on an article by David Pilgrim (see record 2010-24903-003). Pilgrim's paper illuminates the challenges that the profession faces today. In some ways I simply agree wholeheartedly with the paper, but am hoping this commentary will amplify the elements that resonated the most for me. The most significant message for me from Pilgrim's article is the risk that political and financial expediency is overruling academic, ethical and scientific principle. All of the implicit biases and dominant ideas that Pilgrim highlights should be exposed to a super ordinate critical gaze without prejudice. Our profession teaches this critical stance as the highest context marker, the sine qua non of good professional thinking and practice. This is what we are asking trainees to do, yet it seems at odds with the expectations of the National Health Service (NHS) and the dominant political and strategic thinking of the leaders both of our profession and of mental health commissioning. Science demands rigor, but Pilgrim highlights how the profession seems to have sacrificed rigor and principle for short term political and financial advantage, as well as an apparent comfort blanket of false security in a very limited and restrictive definition of science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)