Method, Judgement, and Clinical Reasoning

Abstract

Researchers have tended to take one of two mutually exclusive positions concerning the nature and status of clinical decision-making. On the one hand, clinicians are urged to be more rigorous and analytical when assessing a client, to disregard their intuitions and instead utilise explicit rules and algorithms. On the other hand, they are counselled to regard their “gut feelings” as valuable sources of knowledge about clients. As a way of reconciling these two perspectives, it is important to acknowledge that clinical psychologists are confronted with a wide range of assessment and clinical tasks that vary in their degree of structure. Therefore, in order to effectively manage the diverse tasks they face during a typical assessment, they need to possess a wide range of cognitive skills. These skills, and their associated cognitive tasks, will span the cognitive continuum from the intuitive to the analytical poles (Hammond, 1996).