Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents MSc

Birkbeck, University of London

This MSc is a well-established counselling and psychotherapy training course that is ideal if you wish to work therapeutically with children and young people. It offers you a thorough grounding in contemporary psychodynamic theory and practice and integrates unique psychosocial and organisational perspectives to facilitate a broad understanding of children in context. It is suitable if you have completed a certificate in counselling skills, or equivalent, and have a substantial amount of experience in a helping profession or in an emotionally supportive role. Why choose this course? This course offers you a two-year clinical placement, divided equally into work with children (5-11 years) and work with adolescents (12-18 years), so that you can gain work experience valuable for your future employability and learn how to work safely and collaboratively within an interdisciplinary organisational setting. It includes a one-year mother-infant observation to hone your observation skills. It is ideal if you have some experience of working with children and adolescents and wish to pursue a career in the counselling and psychotherapy sector, for example if you are a nurse, teacher, youth worker, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) practitioner or social worker. It is taught by experienced, practising psychodynamic and/or psychoanalytic psychotherapists who also have training in higher education teaching. What you will learn On this course you will learn the fundamentals of psychodynamic theory and practice, using both contemporary resources and source texts. You will be encouraged to take a psychosocial perspective to consider the interplay between our internal and external worlds and how children’s identities are formed in context. You will also develop a self-reflective stance which is central to counselling practice and consolidate this with your own personal therapy which is compulsory throughout the course. By the end of the course you will have gained the ability to work as a psychodynamic counsellor at an appropriate professional standard with children and adolescents. How you will learn This course is available to study part-time in the daytime. You will learn via a mixture of academic and experiential learning taking part in presentations and discussions and practising your counselling skills. Your clinical learning is facilitated by an external clinical placement in your second and third years, along with regular clinical supervision.