Back to the ivory tower. Training in psychology without practice?

Abstract

It is argued that the chances of the implementation of Bachelor and Master programs in Germany are not used. Instead, the "German Association for Psychology” tries to use the restructuring to push through its understanding of psychology as a "natural science” and its professional interests. This is done by "Recommendations for the implementation of consecutive Bachelor and Master Programs in Psychology” in which the necessity of preserving the "unity of Psychology” is stressed. The problems of everyday practice of psychologists are largely eliminated in these programs. The psychological practitioners and the students are left alone with questions of transformation of scientific results into practice. The study and the reflection of the relationship between theory and practice fall back to a level discussed 40 year ago. It can be argued that the German training in psychology parts with the international development.Finally, some considerations are presented concerning training in psychology which tries to accept the tension provoked by the conception of human beings as bio-psycho-social entities. Besides it is demanded that an important challenge to university will be research on the transformation of scientific results into practice and vice versa.

Keywords

• training in psychology
• bachelor and master programs
• professional interests
• practice training
• theory-practice-problem
• vocational orientation