This programme will provide you with a strong knowledge base and the expertise to practice as an integrative psychotherapist with a broad range of adult clients in a variety of settings.

Philosophical basis of the Programme

We start from the position that psychotherapy is the considered and intentional use of a relationship, grounded in the therapeutic alliance, in the service of the goals of the client. We view the psychotherapeutic relationship as a co-constructed endeavour in which both the client and the therapist are active partners.

Given the centrality of the intentional use of the relationship and of the self of the psychotherapist in contributing to successful outcomes, we put emphasis on self-reflective practice, self-understanding, interpersonal encounter and a sensitivity to attunement, mis-attunement and repair in maintaining an effective therapeutic relationship. By co-creating and maintaining a clearly formulated and secure therapeutic alliance, practitioner and client alike are enabled to focus upon complex interpersonal and intrapersonal issues.

From this intersubjective perspective we focus on both the explicit verbal levels of communication and the implicit, non-verbal levels of relating; on the conscious and non-conscious dimensions of communication. We view the change process as happening at the complex interface of these overlapping dimensions of experience. In the words of Allan Schore (2012) we regard psychotherapy as not solely the ‘talking cure’ but very much the ‘communicating cure’ at multiple levels of experience and interaction. Such an intersubjective approach to psychotherapy integration requires that psychotherapists develop an understanding of the self in its multiple facets in order to exercise flexibility, judgment, range, skills, intuition and imagination in the appropriate use of the various dimensions of a therapeutic relationship in response to the current relational needs of the client.