About this course

Centred on clinical work, you will undertake a supervised clinical placement, where you will see a patient for psychotherapy once a week for a period of a whole calendar year. You will also learn through supervision groups, clinical seminars and online lectures on fundamental psychoanalytic concepts and texts.

Supervision groups

You will meet in a small, supervised group on a weekly basis throughout the first two years. In this group you will present detailed sessions of your work with your psychotherapy patient. The focus is on developing the basic clinical skills of psychotherapy – maintaining the setting, understanding transference and countertransference, formulating interpretations, risk assessment and management, and appropriate record keeping.

Please note, you will be seeing your patient on placement in an NHS or equivalent setting. It is extremely unlikely that you will be able to see a patient at the Tavistock Centre and therefore, you will need to secure your own placement.

Clinical seminars

You will participate in a group with a clinical seminar leader where you will present your psychotherapy patient. The aim of this group is to reinforce the clinical skills learned in the supervision group and to link the clinical material with theoretical ideas and to introduce the idea of clinical formulation.

Theory lectures

The aim of weekly seminars is to introduce you to fundamental psychoanalytic concepts and texts, looking at these both historically and with reference to different theoretical traditions. These will take place at the Tavistock Centre in London.

Personal psychotherapy

You are required to be in personal psychotherapy at least once a week with a psychoanalytic psychotherapist or psychoanalyst registered by the BPC (please note: a psychodynamic psychotherapist or therapist on another register is not suitable). You need to have been in this type of therapy continuously for at least six months before the course starts and ideally at the time of your application. You will need to continue your therapy at least until all clinical work is completed.

If you successfully complete the first two years of this course (part one of the qualifying course in psychodynamic psychotherapy) you will be eligible to apply for part two of the qualifying course, Intercultural psychodynamic psychotherapy (D59I).

Dissertation

In the third year, four dissertation workshops are held to help you develop a dissertation proposal which is then submitted for approval. You will be required to work independently with a supervisor to write a dissertation over the spring term, usually based on your clinical work in the preceding years. This must then be submitted at the beginning of the summer term.

This is a three-year master’s level course. Students may exit after two years with a postgraduate diploma (PgDip).