Advanced Psychodynamic Competencies & Professional Attitude (Children and Adolescents)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Assessment: coursework (100%)

This module is practical and experientially based, and includes a twice-termly large group meeting. You will take part in personal therapy, which is key to professional growth. You will 'become' a client and so experience at first hand how therapy works, and in so doing develop a capacity for self-knowledge and self-reflection. Through this there is ‘modelling’ in which you experience at first hand issues of technique such as ‘boundaries’, confidentiality etc. During this stage of the course, clinical work and supervision contribute greatly to a growing sense of professional identity.

Indicative module content

• The treatment relationship
• Transference and counter transference
• At-risk presentations
• Difficulties with technique
• Understanding work in a larger context
• Developmental issues
• Interpretations and the unconscious
• Developing a counselling language
• The unconscious within organisations
• The role of observer
• Parallels between understanding and observing organisations psychodynamically
• The use of observational skills applied to an organisational context

By the end of this module, you will have:

• skills in thinking psychodynamically about counselling/therapy issues, and making professional communications about counselling/therapy work
• an increased capacity for self-reflection, especially knowledge of one’s inner world and how it impacts on counselling/therapy work, and one’s role in groups and institutions
• the capacity for professional and ethical thinking in counselling/therapy
• an enhanced understanding of specific practice issues.