PsyD Program

History of the Program

The Clinical Psychology Doctoral (PsyD) Program is one of 17 academic degree programs of California Institute of Integral Studies, a private, nonsectarian, nonprofit institution of higher learning in San Francisco, Calif., founded in 1968 and regionally accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges in 1981.

The program admitted its first class in 1991, first awarded the PsyD degree in 2000, and gained accreditation from the American Psychological Association in 2003.*

*Current accreditation status is: Accreditation revoked (Under Appeal).  We are currently in the process of pursuing an appeal.  The program remains, in effect, on probation until the final decision is reached in August 2012.

PsyD Program Mission

The PsyD program has as its mission broad and general training in clinical psychology that prepares students for the profession.

The curriculum and environment of the PsyD program are infused with the Seven Ideals of CIIS. Of particular importance in the PsyD curriculum are the ideals of diversity, spirituality, and many ways of learning and teaching.

Student Outcomes

As requested by APA, the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program maintains data on student outcomes, including attrition, internships and time to completion.

Student Admissions, Outcomes and Other Data

Training Philosophy: Core Values

The program’s training philosophy is based on the practitioner-scholar model of training that prepares students for professional practice in varying public and private contexts as active consumers of psychological science.

Training under the practitioner-scholar model also equips students to evaluate, apply, and participate incontemporary psychological science. The training philosophy and curriculum goals are based on the National Council of Schools and Program of Professional Psychology’s (NCSPP) competency model (Peterson et al., 1997, 2006), which emphasizes the use of the skills of disciplined inquiry in professional practice, development of the person of the trainee therapist, and reflective practice together with the scientific knowledge bases of clinical psychology.

Core Values

At CIIS, training in the PsyD program is guided by the following five core values:

• Diversity
• Importance of relationships
• Reflective learning and practice
• Learning in context
• Broad range of scholarship

Diversity

In keeping with the ideals of the Institute, with the NCSPP competency model, and with the demands of contemporary clinical practice, the PsyD program places diversity at the heart of the program.

The program conceives of diversity broadly. Learning and reflection on human diversity cuts across the curriculum, in that every course syllabus includes a statement on how diversity is understood and addressed within the particular content and skill area of the course. Thus, students are exposed to many aspects and definitions of diversity.

Of considerable importance in the program’s engagement with diversity issues are students’ and faculty’s ongoing self-reflection on how identity influences understanding of clients and effective clinical practice.

The training program offers specific study in three primary areas of human difference: culture and ethnicity, religion and spirituality, and gender and sexuality.

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Culture and Ethnicity

The program aims to develop cultural competence in trainee psychologists, where cultural competence is understood as Whaley and Davis (2007) have described it:

[C]ultural competence as a set of problem-solving skills that includes (a) the ability to recognize and understand the dynamic interplay between the heritage and adaptation dimensions of culture in shaping human behavior; (b) the ability to use the knowledge acquired about an individual’s heritage and adaptational challenges to maximize the effectiveness of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment; and (c) internalization (i.e., incorporation into one’s clinical problem-solving repertoire) of this process of recognition, acquisition, and use of cultural dynamics so that it can be routinely applied to diverse groups. The first stage of recognition of the dynamic interaction between adaptation and heritage dimensions of culture reflects cultural sensitivity as a precursor to cultural competence. (p. 565)

One form of cultural competence focuses on trainee awareness of differences in heritage, ethnic background, and geographical origins of clients and themselves, and the ways in which this difference may influence therapeutic relationships, participation, and outcomes.

Religion and Spirituality

The PsyD program takes seriously the contributions of spirituality and religion to an individual’s orienting system. Our program accommodates the larger paradigm, expressed in humanistic/ existential and more recently positive psychology, that recognizes the values and ultimate concerns in which individuals are invested as variables critical to psychological health and individual well-being (Emmons, 1999; Sperry and Shafranske, 2005).

With Sperry and Shafranske (2005), we recognize at least the following three functions to which religion and spirituality may contribute in people’s lives: (1) coping with stress, (2) meaning making, and (3) spiritual questing or meaning seeking.

Our approach is nondenominational and aims at sensitizing students to the diversity of systems of belief and practice with which clients may identify, and helping them to develop skill and confidence in addressing religious or spiritual issues when these arise in a clinical context.

Gender and Sexuality

A third form of cultural competence that receives attention in the curriculum is gender and sexuality. The curriculum aims to understand these aspects of human experience as socially situated and constructed, and to go beyond limited dichotomous and heterosexist understandings. In accordance with professional practice guidelines (APA, 2000), the PsyD program seeks to develop clinicians who are skilled at working with individuals and couples with differing sexualities, sexual preferences, and genders.

The program is fortunate to be situated in San Francisco, where practicum training in psychotherapy with sexually diverse clients is readily available in community agencies.

Importance of Relationships

Human relationships are fundamental to clinical practice and clinical education. In accordance with the NCSPP model, the program holds that relationship competency involves

the capacity to develop and maintain constructive working alliance with clients and includes the ability to work in collaboration with others such as peers, colleagues, students, supervisors, and members of other disciplines, consumers of services, and community organizations. (Peterson et al., 1997)

This definition underscores the importance of relationships to both educational processes and clinical outcomes. In regard to the latter, research has consistently pointed to the importance of an effective therapeutic relationship to psychotherapy outcome (Horvath and Symonds, 1991; Martin, Garske, and Davis, 2000; Lambert and Barley, 2001).

Therefore, students in the program are taught not only specific knowledge and techniques, but also to understand professional roles, develop and maintain empathy and curiosity about other people, handle difficult interpersonal and clinical situations, and, importantly, develop the capacity to reflect on themselves in the context of their work.

The program also believes that relationships are essential in the learning process. As “the foundation and prerequisite of the other competencies” (Peterson et al., 1997), relationship competency is developed in the context of an interpersonally engaging learning environment.

Peer collaboration, academic support, and clinical mentorship are emphasized through the program as central aspects of the learning environment. In this important sense, we endorse Lubin and Stricker’s (1992) notion that a professional education program in clinical psychology should endeavor to create a learning environment “that parallels the values which we hold for practice” (p. 44).

Reflective Learning and Practice

Reflective learning and practice allows the “how to” knowledge and skills learned in specific relational contexts to be applied with intelligence, sensitivity, and effectiveness to ill-defined or novel, not previously encountered clinical problems and situations.

Reflective learning and practice calls for ongoing critical reflection and self-appraisal in classroom learning as well as in clinical work at practicum and internship sites. Its development in our students is facilitated by faculty who mentor and provide role models for them (Slotnik, 1996; Svinicki, 1991).

Specifically, reflective learning and practice comprises the following: (1) critical thinking, which involves awareness of perspectives and uncovering and assessment of assumptions (Seeley, 1999)—one’s own as well as that of the other (client, supervisor, instructor, idea, or text); (2) sensitivity to context, complexity, and subtlety, which involves awareness of cultural and other factors that define the larger context of an often ill-defined problem situation at hand (Jarvis, l992); and (3) openness to and utilization of feedback, which involves welcoming of constructive criticism, skill and willingness to take appropriate risks, and appreciation of “mistakes” as opportunities for learning.

Our faculty members create safe learning environments for fostering these qualities and skills in their classroom teaching, supervision, dissertation work, advising, and other encounters with the students.

Learning in Context

The PsyD's training philosophy assumes that clinical training succeeds most readily when students learn in contexts that successively approximate clinical practice. Therefore, clinical training includes cumulative and graded experiences integrating academic knowledge with practice opportunities. Such experiences include roleplay in early foundation clinical skills courses, experiential didactics in the three-year Proseminar series, three years of supervised practicum placement in one of two dozen diverse agencies throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, one to two years of internship training in California and throughout the United States, and the trainee’s personal psychotherapy.

One-fourth of practicum trainees each year are placed in the program’s own Psychological Services Center, located in downtown San Francisco, where they work with adults, couples, and groups from diverse backgrounds and have the opportunity to develop psychological assessment skills.

The PsyD program emphasis on contextual learning is congruent with the first ideal of CIIS, which affirms its goal to be an institution that practices an integral approach to learning that encompasses all aspects of learning: the intellectual, the experiential, and the applied.

Broad Range of Scholarship

The PsyD program values a broad range of scholarship in terms of faculty interests and expertise, in the possibilities for student dissertation topics, and in the variety of research methodologies that are taught and used in dissertation research. Faculty research interests are wide ranging and include psychological assessment, spirituality, consciousness studies, research in psychodynamic psychotherapy, and issues confronting special populations.

Student dissertation topics are similarly broad. In keeping with NCSPP (Peterson et al. 2006) and APA (2005) policy statements concerning the modalities of research that are needed to strengthen a scientifically informed practice, dissertation students are encouraged to develop research using experimental and quasiexperimental research designs; qualitative studies shaped by grounded theory, phenomenology, multiple case studies, and ethnographic methodologies; and program design and program evaluation approaches, as well as meta-analyses and integrations of empirical and theoretical literatures.

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