Format: Live-online Lecturer Led Classes (Virtual-Classroom) via Zoom

Duration: 1 Evening Every Week 6pm to 9pm

Online Live Attendance: 30 Hours

Self-Directed Learning: 30 Hours

Total CPD Credits: 60 Credits

Assessment: Written Assignment +/- Viva Voca Assessment

Award: Accredited Professional Diploma

 

Course Accreditation:

- Professional Development Consortium

- Provider of Excellence

- CPD Standards Office

- Irish Counselling & Psychotherapy Association (ICPA)

- Irish Counselling & Psychotherapy Association (Directory)

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Class 1 – Introduction to Psychodynamic & Insight-Oriented Therapy

Theme: History, Philosophy & Core Concepts

• Origins: Freud and the evolution of psychodynamic thinking

• From classical analysis to contemporary relational / integrative approaches

• Core ideas: unconscious processes, conflict, psychic determinism, developmental history

• What is “insight” and why does it matter in therapy?

• Differences and overlaps with CBT, humanistic and systemic approaches

• Framing the diploma: expectations, learning contract, reflective practice journal

 

Class 2 – Personality Development & the Inner World

Theme: How Early Experience Shapes the Present

• Psychodynamic models of development (e.g. psychosexual, object relations, attachment)

• Internal working models: how we “carry” others inside us

• The role of caregivers, trauma, loss and rupture

• Repetition compulsion and life patterns

• Case vignettes: linking current difficulties to developmental themes

• Experiential: guided reflection on your own developmental story (with clear boundaries)

 

Class 3 – The Unconscious, Defences & Symptoms

Theme: How We Protect Ourselves from Pain

• Conscious, preconscious and unconscious

• Ego defences: repression, denial, projection, displacement, rationalisation, sublimation, etc.

• Symptoms and behaviours as compromise formations

• Anxiety, guilt and shame in the psychodynamic frame

• Working with resistance: what it is and what it might be saying

• Skills practice: identifying defences in case examples (and avoiding pathologising)

 

Class 4 – The Therapeutic Relationship & Frame

Theme: Safety, Holding & Containment

• The therapeutic frame: boundaries, consistency, confidentiality, reliability

• The therapist as a “good-enough” object

• Containment, holding environment and emotional regulation

• Building a working alliance in an insight-oriented way

• Managing dependency, idealisation and devaluation

• Role-play: first session – setting the frame and exploring expectations

 

Class 5 – Transference & Countertransference

Theme: Using the Relationship as a Tool for Insight

• Transference: clients’ past relationships replayed in the room

• Positive, negative and eroticised transference

• Countertransference: therapist’s emotional responses and what they may signal

• How to notice, think about and safely use countertransference

• Boundaries and ethics when working with powerful feelings

• Skills practice: supervision-style group discussion of imagined sessions

 

Class 6 – Assessment, Formulation & Setting a Focus

Theme: Making Sense of the Client’s Story

• Psychodynamic assessment: what we listen for (themes, patterns, affect, gaps)

• Working hypotheses vs fixed “diagnoses”

• Formulation: linking past, present, inner world, relationships and symptoms

• Identifying a therapeutic focus in time-limited work

• Risk, complexity, and when to refer or seek additional support

• Activity: Small-group work on building a brief psychodynamic formulation from a case vignette

 

Class 7 – Core Interventions in Insight-Oriented Therapy

Theme: How We Work Moment-to-Moment

• Attending to process: silence, pacing, “evenly suspended attention”

• Clarification, confrontation, and interpretation – differences and appropriate use

• Timing and depth of interpretations: “not too much, not too soon”

• Using here-and-now experiences to foster insight

• Balancing empathy and challenge

• Skills practice: micro-skills role-plays focusing on clarification and gentle confrontation

 

Class 8 – Working with Specific Presentations Psychodynamically

Theme: Anxiety, Depression, Relational Difficulties & Trauma

• Psychodynamic perspectives on:

  • Anxiety and phobias

  • Depression and loss

  • Relationship problems, attachment patterns and intimacy

• Trauma and dissociation: when psychodynamic work needs adaptation

• Integrating psychoeducation without losing depth

• Case discussions: applying a psychodynamic lens to common referral issues

 

Class 9 – Diversity, Culture, Ethics & Power

Theme: Context Matters

• The client’s social, cultural and family context: avoiding “psychologising” everything

• Power, privilege, marginalisation and internalised oppression in the consulting room

• How culture shapes the expression and meaning of distress

• Ethical dilemmas in psychodynamic practice (dependency, gifts, boundaries, dual relationships)

• Working within professional codes and organisational contexts

• Reflective exercise: exploring your own social location and how it may affect your work

 

Class 10 – Endings, Supervision & the Developing Therapist

Theme: Integration & Professional Identity

• Planned and unplanned endings; the meaning of goodbye

• Transference and countertransference around endings

• Reviewing growth, consolidating insight, and supporting autonomy

• The ongoing role of supervision and personal development

• Integrating psychodynamic thinking with other modalities in real-world settings

• Final reflective activity: personal learning review and next steps in practice