Question:
Do you think holistic psychology is possible, thoughts?

I am thinking of becoming a clinical psychologist and was thinking I might get more busines by taking on a holistic view. I have been raised in a house hold where holistic medicine is used to cure virtually everything, and psychology very well could be treated the same way. Anyone have any thoughts?

Answer: I've been a patient to about 6 psychologists over the last 35 years and have known many more professionally and socially. I haven't known one who isn't holistic if by that you mean caring about and treating the whole person. I'd also say they are eclectic in their willingness to use any method to help their clients.

You may mean something much more narrow by "holistic", be that homeopathic, New Age, spiritualist, or something else. If you try that as a psychologist you need to be careful. State medical boards are tough on quackery. Of course if you keep yourself detached from the medical professions, you are much freer to try to help people with alternative methods if you want. You can do that some in medicine and psychology, but the standards of practice there are stricter than for someone who doesn't present himself or herself as some kind of doctor.

So it depends what you mean by "holistic".

EDIT - thanks for the clarification. The law treats homeopathic remedies the same way as OTC remedies, so a psychologist can recommend one just as my neighbor can. The thing that's different is that my neighbor won't get in trouble if he recommends a homeopathic remedy for my depression and I commit suicide. A psychologist in the same situation will. It's true that the same thing can happen with an antidepressant, but what's different is that the antidepressant is the standard of care and a homeopathic remedy is not. So there's trouble here both in terms of malpractice lawsuits and with the state board if a psychologist discourages allopathic medications in favor of homeopathic remedies for a dangerous illness.

Some physicians do recommend homeopathic remedies for various ailments. There shouldn't be side effects from that, so that's not an issue, but it's an issue for any health professional if he or she discourages standard care for an illness and something bad happens, even if that bad thing might have happened anyway.

I don't think homeopathic remedies work except as a placebo effect, but placebo effects can be powerful. In older drug studies 30% of patients chosen for those studies with clinical depression, not just the everyday blues that loosely gets called "depression", improved. That's impressive. There's no risk of side effects at all with that, just the risk for the 70% who don't get better.

I couldn't recommend a homeopathic remedy with a straight face, but if someone else does it doesn't bother me, as long as that someone else doesn't cross the line into discouraging standard treatment in the process. I don't set that line. It's set by the state, by federal legislation regarding homeopathic remedies, and by the health care community. You can't ignore them.

Otherwise psychologists do have a lot of freedom to be holistic.