October 2003
Volume 16, Number 10
The Osteopathic Path
Psychology outside the traditional academic psychology pathways can be either a very rewarding or very stressful experience. Being doubly outside such a pathway is more arduous, but perhaps even more rewarding. Making the experience rewarding takes the willingness to enthusiastically embrace the situation, and to bring to it tools unique to psychology.
My training was in the traditions of the "dustbowl of empiricism," methods of Isidore Gormezano and Richard F. Thompson, my doctoral and postdoctoral mentors respectively. My expectations were to go to an academic psychology department and to explore the interfaces between learning and brain function. However, my plans took a turn when I was offered a position at small and isolated Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, MO. They offered a light teaching load, labs for behavioral and brain research, and a position in the department of physiology. Thus, my first position, and each one since, has been doubly outside the normal academic psychology path, in a medical school focusing on the minority profession of osteopathic medicine.
What is osteopathic medicine, and how did it find me? Osteopathic physicians are trained as fully licensed physicians, but are taught to view the human bodily, psychological, and spiritual functions as the determinants of health and disease, and to use manipulative medicine as one of their treatment modalities. They are equipped to deal with patients from a more inclusive perspective. KCOM was looking for new scientific talent for the school, and I was already somewhat familiar with the osteopathic school of medicine.
For a beginner, the environment was good. I received my first NIH grant and published several papers. After six years, I accepted an invitation to move to the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine as director of research affairs, where I continued my research, but also had access to graduate students from the psychology department. That was the closest I would ever come to a psychology department. In 16 years there, I trained seven PhD students and several master's students. In subsequent moves to the Kansas City, MO and now Ft. Lauderdale, FL osteopathic schools, my research interests have turned more to the basis of osteopathic manipulative medicine.
Why would a psychologist go so far outside the traditional psychology pathway to find a career? What can the non-traditional pathway offer, and what does it take to be successful on the road less traveled?
To go to an institution that is not well known and to be with colleagues who have little understanding of experimental psychology can be daunting. To do so takes a certain self-assurance, and some sense of adventure. In my case, it meant learning what the osteopathic profession was and what it needed. I was even willing to take courses to learn how to best teach osteopathic students and serve the profession's research needs. In return, I was given a vast new opportunity for service in a profession that needed research expertise. I was provided with another source of grant funding that, in fact, sustained my research during lean years. I was given a new area in which to apply my fundamental research design and analysis skills, and I was soon opened up to an entire profession that has rewarded my contributions with significant recognition. I did, however, continue to interact with psychology colleagues at conventions and in other venues - an important aspect of maintaining one's identity.
Of course, I gave up the day-to-day contact with colleagues trained as I was. At Ohio University, I had graduate students from the psychology department, but still, most collegial interactions were with biological scientists or physicians. At times I had to put up with attitudes that placed psychological science at a somewhat inferior position along the scientific spectrum. I could hardly hope to move to the administrative levels of my physician counterparts.
But without question, it has been worth the sacrifices. To go to a non-traditional setting necessitates learning a different discipline or risking always being viewed as an outsider. It necessitates being adaptable to unfamiliar settings and insensitive or biased colleagues. The rewards include opportunities to expand one's horizons, to meet and influence colleagues who would be outside one's usual sphere, and to apply the fundamentals of psychological research skills to new areas.
To take advantage of these rewards, one must have the self-confidence to reach out to those in that setting, remembering that they were there first, and that coming together usually means that you make the first move. If one has these qualities, I can highly recommend considering such a career path.
