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In September 2011 I commenced my second year on the 4-year MSc programme in Integrative Psychotherapy and Counselling
at the Sherwood Psychotherapy Training Institute (www.spti.net) in Nottingham. It is during this second year that my Clinical
Practice will start.
The following is taken from the Sherwood's website, describing the course:
'Integration' involves drawing the best from different psychotherapeutic approaches and blending them based on the core
principles that the client-therapist relationship is an essential aspect of healing and that our development as children affects how
we are now. If aspects of us are not supported as children, they do not fully develop and cannot integrate seamlessly into our
personality. This is where therapy comes in.
The Integrative training programme is a developmental-relational approach that uses elements of Humanistic Psychology, Object
Relations Theory and Psychoanalytic Self-Psycholog, with further integration of Developmental Psychology via the work of John
Bowlby, Margaret Mahler, Daniel Stern and others. The programme focuses on the dynamics and potential of human
relationships, with the aim of facilitating the individual’s ability to respond choicefully and to create more satisfying relationships.
The central aim is to establish a therapeutic relationship which will lead to a corrective emotional relationship. This involves:
* Understanding the internal and external barriers that people create to the formation of successful relationships.
* Understanding how these barriers relate to the problems the person experiences.
* Engaging the person in a therapeutic relationship which provides the opportunity and therapeutic support for engaging with
these relationship problems.
The effectiveness of this kind of Integrative Psychotherapy is based on the ability of the psychotherapist to make an informed
relationship with the client and to use his/her understanding of the difficulties in the relationship (including conscious and
unconscious aspects, emotional and intellectual understanding) to address the client's difficulties.
The psychotherapist has to use both his/her theoretical and personal skills in this engagement and be sensitively aware of their
own contribution to the relationship. This responsibility requires a high degree of self-awareness, honesty, receptivity,
professional acceptance and ethical endeavour on the part of the therapist. Thus the course demands that trainees and students
are willing and able to examine their own capacity for relationship and reflect on these processes.
Angela Garry
Counselling & Psychotherapy