This four year + dissertation-and-viva-year course will offer you an in-depth professional psychotherapy training, conferring registration with UKCP on graduation and preparing you for a rewarding and challenging career as a psychotherapist.

A part-time course running one weekend per month over a 10 unit year and leading to a Master’s of Science (MSc) qualification in Contemporary Person-Centred Psychotherapy and Application. On successful graduation, along with the MSc in Psychotherapy, the course confers individual registration with the UKCP as a psychotherapist.

This course aims to support students to develop as sophisticated person-centred psychotherapists, familiar with issues and approaches used in a variety of settings where contemporary therapeutic work is evolving and to be able to understand different theoretical approaches that follow the relational turn in the psychotherapy field.

The course will provide opportunities for in-depth exploration of:

• Ongoing developments in theory and practice within the ‘family’ of the Person-Centred approach including Mearns’ and Cooper's work on relational depth and configurations of self, Garry Prouty’s work on pre-therapy and Margaret Warner’s work on fragile process, as well as developments in experiential and focusing oriented therapy.
• Current models of psychopathology in use within mental health services including approaches to diagnoses (DSMV), issues of risk and mutual assessment of competence and availability for psychotherapy. The course includes a mental health familiarisation placement and the emphasis will be upon gaining an understanding of the models currently prevalent within mental health settings and relating these to person-centred approaches with a critical perspective.
• Influential models of child development (including the work of Daniel Stern and John Bowlby) again with the emphasis being on relating these ideas to 21st Century Person-Centred developmental theory.
• Research methodologies, both compatible with the Person-Centred paradigm and some that might be contradictory to the values of the Person-Centred approach. We intend to support students to develop as sophisticated consumers and designers of research, who are able to critique from a person-centred perspective.
• Contemporary neuro-scientific research relevant to psychotherapy (including the work of Allan Schore) with particular emphasis on the implications for Person-Centred developmental theory and clinical practice.