Clinical Psychology

Two essential elements of clinical psychological practice are, first, the identification that something in a person’s psychological well-being or behaviour is causing distress and then, second, delivering an intervention to ameliorate that distress. Within clinical psychology, societal understandings of gender and sexuality have been both reflected in and influenced by the professional positioning of the discipline, changing over time, with the defining gaze of distress moving from the imposition of a largely restrictive and medically orientated set of beliefs to more individual, self-defining representations of pluralistic identities. This chapter will chart this journey, making reference to the changing nature of the profession arising from the changes in the frameworks of understanding (ontology) in which psychology has been contextualised and, with it, the shifting offerings in terms of therapeutic intervention.