O clinical scientist movement e as psicoterapias fundamentadas cientificamente

Abstract

Within the debate on the scientificity of psychotherapy and clinical psychology, the Clinical Scientist Movement (CSM) occupies an important place and does of this issue the central object of your project, elaborating original proposals on it. Heir of a tradition in clinical psychology that since World War II tries to establish the clinical psychology as a legitimate science, the CSM also puts on the center of its project two issues that have been occupying the discipline since the post-war, namely, the problem of effectiveness of psychotherapy and the discussion on the PhD program models in clinical psychology. This work investigates the CSM ideas delimiting what is a scientifically based psychotherapy for it and which conditions certain therapeutic practices must meet to be considered as such. A scientifically based psychotherapy would be the one that would demonstrate both that it was effective to treat a psychological disorder through controlled clinical trials and that it was based on a scientific theory. This theory would have to explain the operating mechanism of the disorder or problem at hand and how the aimed therapy leads to therapeutic change. Regard to the CSM science model assumption, we can say that there is a certain debt to the Popperian critical rationalism, for accepting falsificationism as valid criteria for the demarcation of scientific knowledge. However, it also advocates a probabilistic perspective of science and the idea that theories progressively achieve scientific status, positions usually associated with logical empiricism. Finally, it is argued that the CSM project has just endorsing a medical design and technical model of psychotherapy, which does not justice to what really is the clinical practice and all its possibilities as a therapeutic.