ABDUCTIVE REASONING AND CLINICAL-ASSESSMENT

Clinical reasoning is one of the central components of psychological a ssessment. The identification of a client's psychological difficulties and the subsequent depiction of their onset, development, and interre lationships enables clinicians to plan treatment in a systematic and e ffective manner. Traditionally, the hypothetico-deductive conception o f scientific method, with its restricted focus on the testing of hypot heses, has provided the framework for assessment and the development o f case conceptualisations. The framework has major limitations, and in this paper we present an alternative abductive theory of scientific m ethod which we believe provides more appropriate guidance for clinicia ns' reasoning at the various stages of the assessment process. The gui dance covers identification of a client's difficulties, the generation of a case formulation or embryonic clinical theory through abductive reasoning, and its subsequent development and evaluation in terms of m ultiple criteria.