By John Spudich, Summer 2009
In Dr. Tori’s article, “To What Extent Are Instructors ‘Dumbing Down’ Courses at Alliant,” he puts forth the notion that our standards of education—particularly for the PsyD program—may be slipping. While I appreciate the importance of his inquiry, I note a systematic bias in his definition of standards. He marshals a number of examples: that he has been told he is more suited to teach in a medical school, that an esteemed adjunct faculty member spoke of our program as producing “a paraprofessional kind of pygmy psychiatry,” that our student body would not be able to understand the differences between the molecular structures of newer antipsychotics versus phenothiazines. One thing these examples all have in common is the notion of the erosion of the medical or scientific element of education, and this gets associated with a loss of quality itself. Is there another way to look at this? While I know Dr. Tori to be a capable teacher, fit to work in any institution, the suggestion that he might be “more fit to work in a medical school” may have been a communication about the type of knowledge he would demand students master rather than the degree of knowledge. Similarly, I might say to Dr. Tori’s prestigious but rather irascible colleague, “talk therapy might look to you like pygmy psychiatry, but psychiatry looks to me like a stunted form of a therapeutic relationship.” In short, psychiatry and clinical psychology are two different disciplines. Finally, I do not know the difference between the molecular structures of this or that antipsychotic, but it is because I spend my time gathering knowledge more directly relevant to my professional activities. It is not that I turn a blind eye to biology, but given the total pie of attention and energy I have, molecular structures tend to be trumped by relational dynamics and family systems.
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