The Role of Science in Developing Clinical Psychology as a Profession : A Comparative Study on Clinical Psychology between Japan and Britain

In response to the social demands, clinical psychologists have to improve training systems for the future. British clinical psychology and Japanese clinical psychology started almost at the same time, but the ways in which they have developed are very different in terms of the attitudes towards science. Therefore, a comparative study between the two countries is very helpful in considering some factors of the development of clinical psychology as a profession and in constructing a training model. On the one hand, British clinical psychology has continued to assume that clinical psychology is itself scientific. On the other hand, Japanese clinical psychology has not assumed this. In this paper, I introduce a metaphorically experimental design to confirm a hypothesis that a scientific approach would make a contribution towards clinical psychology growing into a profession. As a result of the comparative experimental study, I conclude that assuming a scientific approach is very important in the development of clinical psychology in the modern world, but it is not a developmental task common to every development. It would be more correct to say that assuming a scientific approach is very helpful only in getting clinical psychology out of the pre-modern sectionalism, into integration and into proposing social accountability in the modern society. However, since assuming a scientific approach is not directly related to clinical practice, it is not necessarily helpful in developing clinical psychologists from the training viewpoint and the post-modern viewpoint. Consequently, I suggest a comprehensive model of clinical psychology, which can fit into the Japanese situation and the post-modern world