Of the various classes offered at Keene State I am glad that I stuck with clinical psychology because I believe clinical psychology is at the core of the field of psychology. Also because the Antioch College offers a good clinical psychology program which is also in Keene New Hampshire. Clinical psychology could be defined as the understanding, preventing and relieving of psychological distress and dysfunction and the positive influencing of well being and personal development. Clinical psychologists apply psychological assessment and psychotherapy as well as conduct research, teaching, forensic testimony, program development and consultation. As covered quite a bit in the History of Psychology text clinical psychology is thought to have originated from Lightner Witmer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, when he opened the first clinical psychology laboratory. In the earlier part of the twentieth century clinical psychology mostly looked at assessment with little emphasis on treatment, but after world war 2 this reversed because of the need of more trained clinicians. Ever since the time of world war 2, two different education models were created the Ph.D. that focuses on research and the Psy.D. which focuses on practice. Clinical psychologists are known as experts in applying psychotherapy and are generally trained in the following areas Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Cognitive Behavioral, and Systems or Family Therapy. Sometimes clinical psychology can become confused with psychiatry that has similar ambitions as a field, but is also different because psychiatrists are medical practitioners and one of the biggest differences is that psychiatrists legally can prescribe medicines. Psychiatrist training offers the psychiatrist the ability to have a multidimensional biological, psychological, and social perspective of mental health problems. On another interesting note on psychologists in clinical studies and psychiatrists is that they often work together in multidisciplinary teams with other professionals such as occupational therapists and social workers to create a multimodal approach to help client conditions. But anyhow I think it is obvious that you need to be qualified to be a person that is a professional that studies the way peoples brains work. So far I am about halfway on the long road to becoming a psychologist and I have found specifically that there is a lot of interesting research specifically in clinical psychology that is part of the broad field of psychology.