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Clinical Psychology vs. Forensic Psychology

© Michael Decaire

I am currently undertaking one of my forensic related graduate classes and I thought an interesting change to the typical editorials I have presented in the past, would be to present the next few months of this section as a overview of the Correctional Psychology class I am currently in. So as follows is the start to the finish of my Corrections class. I believe this will provide an excellent overview of the area for my readers. One that has never before been available in this medium.

One of the first and foremost considerations that must be examined when considering the correctional and forensic psychological domains is to understand the variation between typical clinical psychology and its correctional/forensics counterpart. While a lot of the underlying foundation is similar there is a number of key areas in which the two disciplines (if you chose not to immediately identify forensics as a sub-discipline of clinical psychology), there is a number of distinctions that must be considered.

Four areas of variation between Psychology and Legal Psychology: (1) The state of the scientific knowledge (2) Differing purposes of the two disciplines (3) The legal process of probability versus certainty (4) Conclusions based on group to individual findings

(1) The state of the scientific knowledge.

While a lot of clinical practice is based on firm scientific foundation (psychometric theory, personality-cognitive-behavioral-psychodynamic methods), there is significant gaps between the research of pertinent relevance to legal psychology and its applicability to that medium. For example, while there is a great deal of research on attachment patterns, the effects of divorce on child personality development, etc., what does this really tell us about how to place someone during child custody that does not fit into the 'experimental method' in which this research was founded?

(2) Differing purposes of the two disciplines.

Clinical psychology and legal psychology have very distinct and unique purposes behind their methodology. For clinical psychology the goal of assessment or treatment is the promotion of a healthy and positive lifestyle for an individual that has come to you as a client wanting to be assisted. For forensic psychology, it is very much a legal question. The process is adversarial. The forensic practitioner is there to assess an individual on behalf of the court to answer a specific legal question, not to assist that individual in any way.

(3) The legal process of probability versus certainty.

The law is interested in very much a black and white 'absolute' process that is determined by an information gathering and adversarial process. While there is a certain amount of "reasonable doubt" found in the legal system for the most part this is still slightly beyond an area of simple probabilities.

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