Intensive 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.

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

This is a five week full time course held during July/August each year, with additional time allowed for the submission of the written papers.

The course runs from 10:00am to 5.00pm each day, with some additional tutorial time as required. Each day includes lecture/discussion time, skills and practice work, and a Personal & Professional Development group.

The intensity of this course requires that students have had some experience which will have prepared them for the impact of the personal and experiential learning concentrated into this brief period.

Week 1

Induction: Therapy in Context; Power and Knowledge in Therapy; a Phenomenological Approach; The Humanistic/Holistic Approach.

Week 2

Carl Rogers; Gestalt Therapy; Existential Psychotherapy; Cognitive/ Behavioural approaches; the Body in Psychotherapy.

Week 3

Consciousness and Unconsciousness; Freud's Foundation; Object Relations; Communicative Psychotherapy.

Week 4

Jung; ‘Madness'; Group Dynamics; Elective topic; Loss and Bereavement.

Week 5

The Therapeutic Frame; Ethical Issues; Cultural Difference and Marginalisation; Gender and Sexuality; Endings.