In the early 1970s I was a graduate student at The Wright Institute. were I was the second student to be admitted to its Graduate School. The first group of twelve students came together in 1970 into program was little more than a vision of the founders of the Institute. We created the first curriculum and went across the street to the University of California Berkeley to recruit part-time faculty.
The Wright Institute Graduate School offered a Ph.D in Social-Clinical Psychology. The idea was to integrate the two fields which did not communicate much to each other. Graduates who became clinicians would have more awareness of the social contributors to mental health. Some of us would become, in a sense, clinicians to organizations.
In a clinical case seminar, a student was presenting his patient to the group and going on about various theoretical models. The professor stopped him and asked, “What does the patient say the problem is?”
“She says her work is driving her crazy.”
“What does she do?” The class participants leaned forward to hear the answer.
“We haven’t gotten to that yet,” the blushing student therapist said.
