Who is in the field of sport psychology?
The very history of the development of the field of sport psychology is related to the clinical specialization of working in athletic settings with athletes. There is a presently a tension in the field of sport psychology. The APA standards assume that sport psychologists have a PhD in clinical or counseling psychology. It appears the APA reserves the title of Sport Psychologists to this licensed clinically trained group. This is odd, because social psychologist call themselves psychologists and they, in fact, made up many of the original researchers in the field of sport psychology. The first sport psychology textbooks written for college students came form social psychology authors. Maybe in the future something like the PsyD (praxis) and the PhD (research) system will come into fashion for the sport psychologist to separate the academic field from the applied field. As the PsyD and the PhD have distinctive training, so would the two different types of sport psychology professionals.
