sorry, didn't read the above posts before replying with mine. I see the issue of training has already been discussed, with the post-doc hours and such.
On the notion of professions losing turf, it's been interesting for me. I started in a terminal masters program at Ohio State and, with my cohort, got licensed at the LPC level. I had no intention of stopping there with my MA, but everyone else did. When I asked for letters for PhD Counseling Psych programs, I got a few weird responses about "jumping ship" and "well all you'll get in those additional 4 years is a bunch of training in how to do research." What was funny is how all these same masters-level therapists pooh-poohed the social workers. I saw a few people who I am confident to this day are better therapists than many PhD psychologists out there, but as a general rule in 2 years of training all we really had time to do was have a bunch of technique thrown at us and learn how to avoid making big mistakes and screwing people up. There was virtually zero theory or philosophy, which is in my view the major problem with masters level therapists, not to mention only about a year or so of supervised clinical practice compared to 5+.
Fast forward to my program at BYU, where for all intents and purposes the Counseling and Clinical psychology programs existed on different planets. I'm going to unfairly generalize here, but basically the clinical folks were all about DSM, medical model, hand out CBT worksheets and call it done. I met a few who were dissatisfied with this approach and were seeking something more. I always found it interesting that in my program we had classes that would have served these people very well--and my department also could probably have benefited from more interaction with the Clinical folks, especially for those who were planning on working in hospital settings or with higher levels of pathology.
The turf wars and boundary tensions among the helping professions have always amused (at best) or really bugged (at worst) me throughout my training and experience. We're all totally insulated from each other, trying to protect our little piece of turf, looking down on all the others--yet we're all on the same team. The lay person would be hard-pressed to tell the difference in practice between a clinical and counseling psychologist. A lot of my clients don't even really know the difference between a social worker, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist. Throw in MFTs and LPCs, and you get a big mess. I don't understand why we can't acknowledge that we're working together for the same basic reasons, we each may have our niches, but the turf issues and competitiveness only serve to further cordon us all off from each other. There, that's my completely uninteresting soapbox rant about the helping professions for the day.
Next up? PhD level psychologists who are complete nutjobs and embarrassing to those of us who actually possess a bit of gray matter between the ears.
