medical model." Strange as it may sound to our contemporary ears, the
"medical model" referred to in the 1960s was mainly the Freudian model of
neurosis in which mental disorders were conceived as "illness."

Coming from a background of graduate training with such an emphasis, I
was rather surprised to hear my psychology internship supervisor, Logan
Wright, talking about what great opportunities there were for psychologists
working directly in medical settings, with pediatricians. Wright ( 1967) pre-
sented a number of convincing arguments for his point of view. One was that
relatively few children would ever have occasion to see a psychologist (i.e., a
psychotherapist or other mental health professional), but all children repeat-
edly see pediatricians and other primary health care providers. Therefore,
psychologists working in primary health care settings could have an impact
on the prevention, identification, or early treatment of everday develop-
mental and behavioral problems (not just the more serious ones) as well as on
the behavioral aspects of health problems.

Beginning in 1966, Logan Wright, Lee Salk, and Dorothea Ross made in-
quiries and found that there were already about 300 psychologists in the
United States working in pediatric settings (mainly in Departments of Pediat-
rics in medical schools). This was enough to justify the formation of the Soci-
ety of Pediatric Psychology, which later became Section 5 of the American
Psychological Association's Division of Clinical Psychology (the Society
presently has about 800 members). Of the founders of the Society of Pediat-
ric Psychology, Wright and Salk were clinical psychologists, and Ross was a
research psychologist. Thus, the potential for the Soceity to emphasize re-
search as well as clinical service was evident from the beginning. However, its
organizational home within the Division of Clinical Psychology (which re-
quires its members to have clinical training) made the Society of Pediatric
Psychology more congenial as a haven for health service providers than for
researchers in child health psychology. According to a recent survey by La
Greca ( 1986), the most preferred type of graduate training for a pediatric psy-
chologist would be a joint program in developmental and clinical child psy-
chology. The Society has, however, facilitated research by its sponsorship of
a peer-reviewed publication, the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, and by its
sponsorship of research presentations at the annual meetings of the Ameri-
can Psychological Association.

In its early days, pediatric psychology dealt more with children's behavior
and development than it did with child health in the strict sense: for example,
much of my own early work in this area involved giving IQ and achievement
tests to children, evaluating and treating behavior problems, and doing re-
search on hyperactivity (now called attention deficit disorder) (e.g., Routh,
Schroeder, & O'Tuama, 1974). Like me, many other pediatric psychologists
were supported by funds from the U.S. Maternal and Child Health Service to
do interdisciplinary clinical training in mental retardation and develop-

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