Division 6: Clinical and Community Psychology

Presidential Address:
BLAMPIED Neville (New Zealand)
The twenty-first century scientist-practitioner: doing and applying science case-by-case

For more than 50 years the concept of the professional psychologist as both a scientist and a practitioner (often called the Boulder Model) has been an inspirational ideal that has guided training and informed professional identities across a wide spectrum of applied practice. But, as many have lamented, it has been very difficult to put the ideal into practice. A fundamental reason for this difficulty is the mismatch between the epistemological model of science adopted by psychology – an outdated hypothetical-deductive approach completely dominated by the null-hypothesis statistical testing of between-group mean differences – and the needs of science, and especially, practice. This talk will present the single-case research tradition and its contemporary developments as an alternative approach to both science and practice, one that effectively meets the need for psychological research to be more ideographic, and best-fits the challenges encountered when we apply our science to the problems we will encounter in the 21st C.

Keynote lectures:

MURRAY Michael (UK)
From narratives of despair to narratives of hope through participation in community arts