The clinician's art, or why science is not enough

The importance of a scientific basis for clinical activity receives principal emphasis in the prevailing conception of what it means to be a clinical psychologist. An analysis of the activity of the clinician, however, reveals that in addition to empirical considerations, such activity necessarily includes two forms of clinical art, namely, empirical construction and creative construction. The former subserves scientific efforts to explain the causes of clients' difficulties and how to treat them, whereas the latter subserves efforts to facilitate change in clients by helping them to construct new meanings about their difficulties. Although distinct, the two forms of construction share important interrelationships. That both forms of construction suffuse most clinical activity underscores the need for a more explicit emphasis on clinical art in the clinician's training and professional definition.