Foundation Certificate in Psychotherapy & Counselling

Introduction

The Foundation courses provide a basic training and a solid grounding in psychotherapy and counselling skills. This is achieved by combining academic, practical and experiential components within a supportive but challenging framework.

No single perspective or set of underlying values and assumptions, expressing a particular philosophical viewpoint on an aspect of being human, is universally shared in current psychotherapeutic thought and practice. The Foundation course allows competing and diverse models to be considered both conceptually and experientially so that their areas of interface and divergence can be exposed, considered and clarified.

This aim is to highlight the value of holding the tension between contrasting and often contradictory ideas, of "playing with" their experiential possibilities and of allowing a paradoxical security which can ‘live with' and at times even thrive in the absence of final and fixed truths.

Thus differing theoretical and philosophical world-views are not only presented as ideas, through discourse and discussion, but as embodied in the personal and theoretical diversity of the individual tutors delivering the course.

Course Objectives

The overall aim of the foundation training is to provide a basic training in psychotherapy and counselling skills, using a combined academic, practical and experiential approach. A significant ancillary aim is to provide participants with the opportunity to make a properly informed decision about whether they should undertake further professional training.

The key course objectives of the course is to make it possible for participants:

• to acquire a basic knowledge and understanding of a range of psychotherapy and counselling theory, with the main focus on the existential-phenomenological, psychodynamic and humanistic/integrative perspectives. Cognitive/behavioural approaches are also considered;
• to develop an initial competence in the use of essential communication and counselling skills;
• to develop an aptitude for self-evaluation in respect of their use of such skills;
• to examine their own beliefs, assumptions and prejudices so that they can help others to do the same;
• to develop their capacity to reflect on their own interpersonal and emotional processes, patterns and experiences;
• to think critically and non-dogmatically about psychotherapy and counselling theory and practice.

Description

This course comprises three 10 week terms, with students attending one 4 hour session per week. Each session includes a lecture/discussion period, extensive skills and practice work, and concludes with a one hour Personal & Professional Development group.

Three written papers are required, two by the end of term 2 and one on the completion of the course, for which tutorials are available. There are three intakes in October and two in January. Successful applicants may choose from whichever intake has vacancies, but cannot move from one intake to another once the term has begun.

Course Structure

Academic

Lectures and presentations will introduce students to basic theories of psychotherapy and counselling, with an emphasis on the existential-phenomenological, psychodynamic, humanistic/integrative orientations.
Material focused upon professional issues in counselling will also be presented. There will be an opportunity to engage in discussion and experiential work relating to the topic of the presentation.

Experiential

Experiential exercises will relate to the theoretical material presented and to the development of listening skills, self-awareness, and the giving and receiving of feedback.

Skills Practice

In these sessions students will be introduced to the essential skills and techniques of psychotherapy and counselling. Students will also participate in exercises with each other usually in triads of ‘counsellor', ‘client' and observer - using material from their own experience. This is an opportunity to practise psychotherapy and counselling skills and receive feedback.

Self-Development Group Work

Course members will work in a small group, with a facilitator. This will be an opportunity for students to explore their personal and interactive processes in the group, and their own professional and personal development.

Assessment

Evaluation is based on assessment of students' participation throughout the course and on the successful completion of written assignments

Syllabus

The following syllabus outline details the delivery options:
One Year Foundation

Term One
Orientation and Introduction; Therapy before Therapists; An Overview of Humanistic Therapy; the Work of Carl Rogers; Introduction to Gestalt Therapy; The Body in Humanistic Therapy; The Fundamentals of Phenomenology; Power, Gender and Race in Therapy; Society, Biology and Reality.

Term Two
Consciousness and Unconsciousness; the Work of Sigmund Freud; Melanie Klein and Object Relations Theory; Communicative Psychotherapy; Carl Jung; Alfred Adler; the Impact of Psychobiology; the Existential Alternative; Working with Dreams.

Term Three
The Frame in Therapy; the Profession of Therapy; Transcultural Counselling; A Spiritual Life; Mental Health and Mental Illness; A Matter of Ethics; Eating, Addiction and Dependency; Putting Theory into Practice; Working with Loss and Bereavement.

Evaluation

Evaluation is based on assessment of students' participation throughout the course and on the successful completion of three pieces of coursework, a brief process report, an essay about their personal and professional development throughout the course, and a theoretical paper.