Course Features
Provides a clinical training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy contributing to professional qualification to practice.
Contributes to a rigorous theoretical study of the principles underlying psychoanalytic practice.
Includes participation at weekly psychiatric case conferences at St Vincent's University Hospital - a unique teaching forum bringing together psychiatric and psychoanalytic responses to mental illness
Can form part of a four-year continuous Special Modality Training (SMT) in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Course Overview
This part-time 2 year programme provides a critical and theoretical understanding of the principles underlying psychoanalytic psychotherapy and contributes to the professional training necessary to undertake this therapeutic method with adults. Since its inception, the programme has produced over 200 graduates. It caters largely for mental health professionals, which include doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, therapists, counsellors and nurses.
The programme also accepts applications from candidates from other backgrounds who are suitable for the programme on the basis of their own prior experience of psychoanalysis.
Who Should Take This Course?
The course caters largely for:
• Mental health professionals
• Doctors
• Psychiatrists
• Psychologists
• Social workers
• Therapists
• Counsellors
• Nurses
In recent years its remit has broadened to accommodate a range of individuals from other professional backgrounds, ranging from the arts and academia, through to teaching, including business and the law.
The course has produced over 200 graduates, the majority of whom continue to work in their primary professions using psychoanalytic principles to inform that work. Many set up their own private practice, while remaining in personal therapy and supervision. Some become psychoanalysts who remain in personal analysis and additionally make a scholarly contribution to teaching, training and research.
What Will I Learn?
This part-time 2 year programme provides a critical and theoretical understanding of the principles underlying psychoanalytic psychotherapy and contributes to the professional training necessary to undertake this therapeutic method with adults. As a clinical practice, psychoanalytic psychotherapy derives from psychoanalysis, a discipline which is based on the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud. In addition to Freud, since its inception in 1984, the course content has been strongly marked by the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 1980) and his re-reading of Freud's work, making it the only course of its kind in Ireland with this distinctive theoretical underpinning.
By way of background, psychoanalysis is a field of study informed by a therapeutic method which privileges the unconscious processes of the mind. This focus on unconscious processes and the laws governing them remains central to the clinical practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. In addition to its clinical focus, psychoanalysis has an undisputed place in contemporary culture with many of its concepts informing diverse fields of academic and artistic enquiry ranging from law, sociology, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry to philosophy, literary criticism, the arts, women's studies and queer studies. The link between clinical relevance and contemporary cultural concerns is given emphasis in this programme.
Structure
The course is delivered in 13 modules:
Eight of these 4 modules in year one and 4 in year two - provide 5 credits each.
Of the remaining 5 modules, 4 are specifically related to clinical training and assessment and run continuously throughout the two years. These are Supervision of Clinical Practice and Clinical Diagnostics and Research, each contributing 7.5 credits yearly. The final module is by dissertation and contributes 30 credits.
Attendance must be 80% or higher throughout the course
Assessment is by continuous assessment for the taught modules and a mark for the thesis
Total credits awarded: 100 ECTS
All teaching is carried out in The School of Psychotherapy within the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Mental Health Research at St Vincent's University Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4, with the weekly psychiatric case conference taking place in the Main Lecture Theatre in the Education and Research Centre also at St Vincent's University Hospital.
Comment
This programme provides a critical and theoretical understanding of the principles underlying psychoanalytic psychotherapy and contributes to the professional training necessary to undertake this therapeutic method with adults.