The Training in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Prospectus 2008
The Training in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (The TCPP) is a long established training under the aegis of the West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy. It offers a training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with adults to a standard which, if completed satisfactorily, will enable course graduates to apply for registration with the UKCP (AP-PP section). Graduates of this course could expect to use this qualification as the basis for both independent practice or within the NHS.
Our Philosophy
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy rests on the belief, voiced by Freud, that we are not masters (or, indeed, mistresses) in our own house. Instead, our conscious intentions are undermined by powerful, largely unconscious, emotional forces. For many people, and for much of the time, these forces show themselves in relatively manageable ways: we sometimes forget disagreeable appointments and we make slips of the tongue so that we find ourselves saying the precise opposite of what we intended. Above all, perhaps, we dream, and in doing so enter a strange world which yet seems to have a meaning of its own.
If we are less fortunate, we may be constantly caught up in internal conflict, or plagued by phobias or obsessions that no amount of rational thought or exertion of will seems to control, or we find ourselves in disagreeable or dangerous situations that bear a disconcerting likeness to similar situations in the past.
In Freud’s and Klein’s scheme of things, and in that of their followers, the human infant is born in a primitive and fragmented state and into an unintelligible world of conflict that is slowly made sense of, largely at first, through a mother sufficiently in tune with him, to shield him and feel with him. Inevitably this relationship is subject to attack, both from the mother’s failures in empathy and from the powerful feelings of the child, the rage and pain and terror occasioned by its helplessness.
Some of these feelings are too early to be thought or verbalised but leave their traces, often physical, on the developing psyche. Later painful feelings and events are repressed, and they too remain alive and active in that area of the psyche that is the unconscious. In our unwitting attempts to overcome the trauma they have caused us we are impelled to revisit them in a myriad of guises, repeating the pain and difficulty of our early relationships.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy aims to make these unconscious pains and conflicts conscious. It assumes that if the patient is allowed to say whatever comes to mind, the words he uses, his metaphors, images and dreams, the connections between one thought and another will slowly reveal what has been so carefully hidden. Above all, early traumas will be repeated in his relations with the therapist who comes to represent these images, or internal objects, that the child has fashioned out of his early experience of parents and other significant adults. Powerful internal conflicts are thus externalised, made conscious and become capable of being worked through until they lose much of their compulsion. As it becomes possible to find words to express them adequately and to make sense of them, they become domesticated and tamed.
Because the work between patient and therapist is emotionally intense, the therapist needs a clear sense of herself and the capacity to create a firmly boundaried space in which the patient can feel and be safe. For this to be possible, adherence to a code of ethics and practice is absolutely necessary but not, however, sufficient. The therapist’s own therapy lies at the heart of psychoanalytic training, revealing at first hand the ways in which her unconscious mind works and enabling her to identify and understand her own areas of conflict and weaknesses, often including a self-idealisation – which will inevitably be tested in her relations with patients.
All other parts of the rigorous training that therapists undergo – carefully supervised clinical work, wide theoretical reading, infant observation and a psychiatric placement – rest on and are made sense of by the training therapy.
In designing our training, we have kept all the above considerations in mind. Our aim is not only to provide a firm theoretical and clinical basis for the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, but to instil in our students an understanding of the seriousness of their work and the need for the highest ethical standards in their dealings with patients.
Course Structure
Personal Development
The course follows the traditional mode of psychotherapy training in that the training therapy is the principal component of learning. Students will be required to be in therapy, with a training therapist approved by the Committee of The TCPP, at a frequency of at least twice per week throughout the duration of the training and for a period of not less than twelve months before the commencement of the training.
The Seminar Programme
- This consists of sixty double seminars (five per term) over a period of four years; one seminar each term to consist of two clinical presentations. Seminars are normally presented by senior analysts and psychotherapists from outside The TCPP. The Seminar Programme, which takes place on Saturdays at the Postgraduate Centre of the City Hospital in Birmingham, is open to the public and makes an excellent introduction to the training for prospective students. The clinical presentations each term are not open to non-Course members.
- Additionally, on the same Saturdays as the Seminar Programme, Work Groups take place to provide an opportunity for addressing further specific teaching needs of students. These are usually led by a member of the Training Committee or other senior psychoanalytic psychotherapists.
- The last component of the Saturday programme is the Case Discussion Group, led by a member of the Training Committee. This is aimed at bringing together theory and practice through the discussion of students’ clinical work mostly in light of the preceding seminars of the day.
Clinical Experience
This component of the training runs in parallel to the Seminar Programme.
- During the first year, students are required to gain experience of psychiatric practice by means of an extended placement unless they already have suitable experience.
- Students are required to see two training patients for a period of 24 months each. The work with each training patient is supervised weekly by an approved Training Supervisor. Supervisors and students are required to provide six monthly written reports of the work.
- Students are required to undertake an observational experience with a baby or young child unless they have relevant prior experience.
Admission Requirements
Applicants should have a university degree or its equivalent professional qualification. Students without such formal qualifications should demonstrate the ability to complete an intellectually demanding theoretical training. Students with no previous clinical experience might need to consider carefully whether an advanced training is the best starting point of their career.
All applicants are required to attend an assessment by a psychoanalyst of their personal suitability for the training. In addition, they will be interviewed by two members of the Training Committee. A non-refundable fee will be charged to cover the cost of the application procedure.
An assessment fee will be charged by the psychoanalyst and this will be paid by the applicant.
Fees
The course fees are currently £1,929 per annum for junior students and £1,287 for senior students (i.e. those who have completed the four year Seminar Programme). There will be a small additional fee for the Work Groups associated with the experience of infant observation. Course Fees are reviewed annually and do not include therapy or supervision fees.
Applications
For more details or to apply for the course contact Carmela Billingham, the course Administrator tcpp@wmip.org.
If you are interested in the training but feel that you may not meet the admission requirements, or if you have any other queries, please contact our Administrator who will arrange for the Admissions Tutor to speak with you.
Full details of the Course are contained in the Course Handbook, available from the Administrator:-
Mrs Carmela Billingham
2 Haddon Croft
Hayley Green
Halesowen
West Midlands B63 1JQ
Email: tcpp@wmip.org
Telephone: 0793 925 5534
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