The profession of psychology as seen by a doctor of medicine
Abstract
Two questions are considered: (1) What medicine and psychology could offer each other. (2) What do medicine and psychology have in common? Medicine can gain much from the contributions of psychology in social psychology, the general problem of science––the problem of the observer, the scientific correction of variables through statistical analysis, the interpretive view long taken by psychologists, aid in selection of medical practitioners, improvement in methods of medical education, the balance and temperance of judgment in the psychiatric field. Psychology in turn can profit from medicine in studying medical, legal, educational and religious professional associations and their methods of solving problems, the obligation to forecast the future course of disease, sensitiveness to all circumstances and to the unexpected, finding the meaning of a symptom rather than its cause. The demand for very large numbers of persons with general practical experience and reasonable competence, not necessarily the Ph.D., is noted. Medicine and psychology share the extraordinary stimulus of the hospital experience, gross underestimation of hereditary factors, and responsibility that comes from power.