Clinical Psychology Study Guide: Assessment, Diagnosis and the Main Therapy Schools in 64 Flashcards

Clinical psychology is the largest applied branch of the field, and the one with the heaviest vocabulary load: two diagnostic manuals, three tiers of test access, four major schools of practice, and roughly a dozen named therapy traditions that each come with their own founder and their own technique. Deck ZY3780 — Clinical Psychology: Practice & Therapy Approaches (64 cards, free on Flip It) is built exactly around that map, and the fastest way through it is to stop reading it linearly.

What the 64 cards cover

Training and scope: the Boulder Model, the PsyD and the Vail Conference, clinical psychology vs psychiatry, prescriptive authority, shell shock and the post-war origins of PTSD treatment. Assessment: psychological assessment as a core practice, Level A/B/C qualification tiers, WISC-IV and WAIS, MMPI, the Rorschach, neuropsychological testing, the mental status examination, DSM-5 vs ICD-10/ICD-11, validity, reliability, functional analysis, and clinical vs mechanical prediction. Therapy: psychoanalysis and free association, transference, defense mechanisms, self psychology, ego psychology, object relations, person-centred therapy, existential psychotherapy, Gestalt and the empty chair, Emotion Focused Therapy, CBT, systematic desensitisation, Socratic questioning, DBT, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, behavioural activation, contingency management, exposure therapy, family and systems therapy, narrative and solution-focused therapy, transpersonal psychology, and the insight/action and in-session/out-session axes.

Ten cards worth memorising first

Two things to fix as you go

Cards 21 and 61 say almost the same thing. The deck defines psychotherapy and therapeutic alliance with nearly identical wording — a formal relationship employing procedures to explore problems and encourage new ways of thinking. Rewrite the second one: psychotherapy is the whole treatment, the alliance is the bond plus agreement on goals and tasks inside it. Otherwise you will flip both and think you know two things.

Build the four-column grid, not a pile. The deck interleaves schools — Rogers sits near Frankl, CBT techniques sit near behavioural ones. Draw four columns (psychodynamic, humanistic/existential, behavioural-CBT, systems) and drop every founder, technique and acronym card into one. The postmodern and transpersonal cards get a fifth column. Reviewing by column turns fifty scattered cards into five short stories.

One caveat on the prescribing card: the seven states listed are a snapshot, and state legislatures keep adding to that list. Treat it as a fact with a date on it.

Already comfortable with the therapy schools? Pair this deck with the history of psychology deck, which supplies the biographies behind half the names here.

Deck code: ZY3780, in the General Psychology category on Flip It.