At present, students in psychology who wish to attend a doctoral program that is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) typically apply to one of three types of programs: clinical, counseling, or school psychology. The fact that students enter different programs would suggest that there are fundamental differences between these three primary categories of education and training; however, as this article and others in this JCLP special series indicated, evidence suggests that these differences are more apparent than real (e.g., whether a student is educated as a clinical, counseling, or school psychologist is not a particularly robust predictor of the type of internship or employment that student ultimately secures).

At the same time, a variety of events over the past several years has confirmed that all professional psychologists should be educated and trained in a common set of functional and foundational competencies (e.g., the Competencies 2002 Conference). Indeed, the fundamental system of accreditation for these doctoral programs is clear that education and training should be "broad and general," with specialization occurring late in training and especially at the postdoctoral level. Such realities are codified further by psychology licensure boards, which do not typically distinguish among the practice areas of clinical, counseling, and school psychology in granting licensure. Finally, there is increasing recognition that we should be educating and training our students so that they can respond competently and flexibly to the widest possible range of opportunities and needs within both the larger health care field and society.

Given the above context, this specific article—and the entire JCLP special series—suggests that the Combined-Integrated (C-I) approach to education and training directly addresses these issues, and offers a wide range of broader implications and potential applications for the field and profession of psychology as well as the various publics that we serve (e.g., for interprofessional collaboration, the health care field, development of a global curriculum, the unified psychology movement, issues of assessment and professional identity, and higher education). In this sense, as described and explicated by Consensus Conference participants—and the authors who contributed to the subsequent special series—the C-I model may well represent a "new" (or at least largely untapped) "methodology that’s useful" for the profession of psychology, our students, and the public at large.

  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

It is difficult for policy makers and the public to understand what it does and does not mean to be a "psychologist"—much less to appreciate the differences among us—particularly when evidence suggests that these differences are much greater within than between the categories of clinical, counseling, and school psychology. Thus, the primary significance of this paper—and the Consensus Conference upon which it is based—is that it describes and explicates an approach to the education and training of psychologists that has the potential to integrate what we have been historically with what we must do as a profession to become a vibrant, relevant, and integral member of the broader health care field.

I have long been interested in integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to research and theory, and how such perspectives are both inculcated into professional identity and subsequently applied in practice. For example, my dissertation research involved the development of an applied model of professional child and youth care (called the "therapeutic home parent"). For the past decade, I have been working on a theoretically integrative and empirically grounded system for examining human beliefs and values (consisting of the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory or BEVI, Equilintegration or EI Theory, and the EI Self); this system is currently being used to examine how, why, and under what circumstances beliefs and values are and are not "transformed" as a result of real world experience (e.g., in doctoral training programs; while studying abroad).

Given these interests as well as relevant professional roles (e.g., director of a "combined" doctoral program), the substantial but largely untapped potential of this integrative approach to education and training was very appealing. Thus, with a great deal of help, input, and support from a number of colleagues, I organized a symposium at the APA’s 2002 annual meeting in Chicago on the "combined" approach to education and training, and invited the directors of all such programs to an organizational meeting. At that meeting, we agreed to hold the 2003 Consensus Conference. In 2004, the editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology asked me to guest edit a special series on the Consensus Conference and C-I model. That is how (and why) I became involved in this research.