Successful Career in Clinical Psychology

When thinking of a career in psychology it is seen that there are usually 2 main broad categories in psychology that one can select from when eying for a job. These are that of clinical psychology and counseling psychology. When talking of clinical psychology it is seem that most of the people engaged here are working towards carrying out personality tests and psychological assessments of the patients which are then further used by them towards diagnosis and treatment of the psychological ailments that patients coming to them suffer from.

These tests can be simple IQ tests or any other similar evaluation platform which are directed towards accessing the psychological make up of the patient by allowing the psychologist to evaluate the patients knowledge, reasoning skills, verbal ability, memory as well as his attention span. In short, these psychological tests are aimed towards categorizing behavorial and logical patterns of the patients. When talking about clinical psychology it is worth mentioning that there are 4 main perspectives to it. These include psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioral and systems/family therapy.

In clinical psychology, pychodynamic therapy deals with understanding the root of mental illness by exploring the childhood memories of the patient. On the other hand the humanistic therapy brings in a new form of therapy where it tries to help the patient by allowing him to connect with their natural born potential. The cognitive behavioral therapy brings in the element of our understanding of the interaction between how we think, feel and act. In systems or family therapy the psychologist brings in the element of the family of the patient and focuses on his relationships with them and how does he fare with them.

Just like in the case of counseling psychology, clinical psychology too has several fields where one can specialize in. This includes health, neuropsychology geropsychology as well as social behavior therapy.