INTRODUCTORY COURSE IN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
The Introductory Course is both a stand alone certificate course and an introduction to study at the PA. Students who complete the IC can apply to the one year Diploma in Community and Psychotherapy and the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training.
OVERVIEW
The course will take place on Thursday evenings from October 2022 at our premises in Hampstead, north London, and consists of a weekly seminar and an experiential group. Each student will be allocated a personal tutor. You will be invited to study past and current psychological theories and treatments of human suffering taught in conjunction with philosophy, in particular phenomenology as well as ideas drawn from art, literature, the politics of psychiatry, power and lived experience.
REQUIREMENTS
The PA has never prized academic qualifications over other skills and experience. Sometimes people who never intended to become psychotherapists find that the Introductory Course inspires them to follow this path after all.
Being a student at the PA means you will have access to our small library and you will also be invited to attend regular PA events and contribute to the PA newsletter.
APPLICATION AND FEES
Application is by interview. The course costs £840 plus a £50 interview fee. There are a limited number of bursaries available for students surviving on low income.
Interviews for 2022/23 begin in April. Click here to apply.
PROGRAMME
Thursday Evenings
Course Coordinators:
Andrea Heath & Lucy King
Experiential Group Facilitators:
Laura Lauberte & James Mann
Administration:
Sophia Raja
Experiential group begins at 6.15pm and lasts ninety minutes
7.45pm break
Seminar begins at 8pm and lasts ninety minutes
Term 1
20 & 27 October 2022
Theory in Psychotherapy — Use and Misuse
Lucy King
3 & 10 November
What is Community?
Jake Osborne
17 & 24 November
Ethics and Character in Psychotherapy
Elie Jesner
1 & 8 December
The Divided Self
Alison Davies
15 December
Phenomenology
Miles Clapham
Term 2
26 January & 2 February 2023
Buddhism & Psychotherapy
Andreas Constandinos
9 February
An Animated Life
Alex Widdowson
16 & 23 February
Class and Psychotherapy
Paul Gurney
2 & 9 March
What Happens in the Room
Nick Mercer
16 & 23 March
How far has psychotherapy been an enabler of neoliberal values like individualism, social inequality and the centrality of the market?
How far has it been a force for positive social and cultural change as well as individual development?
Can psychotherapy undermine and transcend
the dominion of money and social injustice?
Nicola Saunders
Paul Atkinson
Term 3
20 April
On Nietzsche
Onel Brooks
27 April & 4 May
Friendship, beauty and justice: on being fair
Robbie Lockwood
11 May & 18 May
Intimacy Avoidance & The Psyche as an Energetic Field
Nick Duffell
25 May
Art Inside
Amy Ison
1 June
Psychotherapy and the Decentred Subject
Del Loewenthal
8 & 15 June
Endings
Mark Elmer