Licensure and Certification
Licensure and certification summarizes the mechanisms in place for identifying qualified psychologists, both at the governmental level, and by private organizations that credential licensed psychologists. Those terms are distinguished from and compared to other terms such as credentials, registered, and chartered. Standards for the recognition of psychologists are stated. Organizations that credential psychologists in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are briefly described. Characteristics of credible credentialing organizations are summarized. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
counseling psychology; 
health psychology; 
practice in clinical psychology; 
certification; 
credential; 
doctoral degree; 
globalization; 
health; 
health service psychologist; 
licensure
Psychology's self-regulation and the setting of professional standards
Abstract This article presents three certification mechanisms, providing a historical introduction and a status report on each, and then relates each as a form of assessment of competence with differences in level and scope. Key national organizations that play a major role in designation or accreditation of psychology programs or in the credentialing of individual psychologists are profiled. The article concludes with a recommendation for an international regulatory council in psychology to deal with interorganizational issues in the profession.
Certification of Psychologists by the American Board of Professional Psychology
We psychologists are human—human first and psychologists only secondarily. As such, we have undertaken to sublimate and control such powerful human emotions as greed, lust, and envy in the service of becoming professional psychologists. Yet professional training in psychology is not likely to strengthen emotional controls over primitive instincts, nor is such training designed to correct significant flaws in character development. Newly created psychologists vary widely in the degree to which they have acquired emotional maturity and strength of character. Moreover, the skills acquired during professional training are learned to varying levels of proficiency. Some psychology students have more aptitude than others, some work harder at learning to be psychologists than others, some go through better training programs and have better role models, and some work harder at maintaining their professional skills once formal training is completed.