Thank you for your vote of confidence in electing me to the Division 49 leadership trio. It has been an honor and privilege after teaching group therapy in the APA accredited doctoral internship service. There are so many psychologists who teach general and specialty clinical practice in the APPIC internship system but there aren’t enough of us teaching Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy. I do believe that my influencing so many practitioners in my 22 years of internship training service led to my being elected to the presidential sequence. Thank you all for that.
I have also been involved with the issues surrounding our achieving and maintaining our Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy specialty and there is one big thing that I want to leave you all with. It has to do with the APA training model for clinicians and follows the training taxonomy of Coursework and Practicum, Internship, Post-Doctoral Residency and then Licensed Practice.
We face this challenge most anywhere where doctorates are granted that lead to licenses for clinical practice in psychology. It is also present almost anywhere that practicum training is proffered in preparation for the doctoral internship year of full-time practice. It is present in post doc where only some those candidates have exposure to training and expertise in group psychology and group psychotherapy. And finally, it is present in the cohort of licensed psychologists who are working hard to make up for their lack of training and are active in our various professional associations that offer continuing professional education to address this need for essential practice skills.
That big thing is the fact that basic coursework followed by practicum, internship and post doc clinic training in group psychology and group psychotherapy is scarce, intermittent and hard to find. This is wholly inconsistent with APA policies for the accreditation of training for counseling and clinical psychology candidates which spell out clearly the need for training in the specialties. But if you start looking at the course catalogs of the programs there isn’t much out there across the board save the programs we work for because we are the ones training the next generation.
I am hoping that the division can enjoin itself in the uniform position that group psychology and group psychotherapy coursework should be present in every clinical doctoral training program in the United States. And we know it does not. Most of us with knowledge and training in Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy got there by luck and good fortune, and likely by finding those rare weigh stations where the expertise was present, and the clinic ran groups and trained the candidates. For now, we know that there is a dearth of coursework and training in our specialty and that it leaves us with insufficient numbers of psychologists who are prepared to provide the training or the clinical practice of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy when they matriculate to licensed practice.
It is almost as if there is an assumption that Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy are generalist skills and that all clinicians already know how to practice. This cannot continue, and our future depends upon it. We are already a marginalized specialty and most often last on the list of training priorities.
It is my greatest hope that the leadership of Division 49 will work together with The American Group Psychotherapy Association, The Association for Specialists in Group Work, The American Academy of Group Psychology and other organizations that oversee and advocate for the specialty practice of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy to address this insidious and longstanding issue.
Informal surveys have revealed over the past ten years that this dearth is real and longstanding. I hope the division begins to address this problem which at its core will require lobbying APA Accreditation to ensure that the fundamental skills and techniques of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy be present in all stages of the APA Training Taxonomy for all accredited clinical and counseling psychology programs.
Moving mountains takes time. We all stand on the shoulders of those who have served before us. It is my parting hope that we begin to address this longstanding and insidious problem within APA where students train to be clinicians in accredited programs and internships but far too often they don’t get much exposure to Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy.