MSc Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy

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

Validated by Middlesex University

Joint Heads of Department: Professor Maria Gilbert and Professor Vanja Orlans

Programme Leader: Professor Maria Gilbert

This programme offers postgraduate training in Integrative Psychotherapy leading to a Diploma and/or MSc. It also leads to registration with the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

The Diploma/MSc is a part-time training that takes a minimum of four years of structured learning of which the last three years contribute to the MSc. In addition, there is a dissertation module which is usually completed after the final taught year. The initial Introductory Year is an essential part of the Diploma course and serves as an assessment and preparation year preceding the long-term commitment to psychotherapy training. Students do not register for the MSc until they have completed this year at which point there is a further assessment process. The Clinical Diploma course and the MSc cover the same content, a number of written projects per year, and have the same requirements in terms of personal therapy, clinical work and clinical supervision. All the MSc written work is double marked.

Each training year for the Diploma/MSc is divided into ten 14-hour units. These units include the integration of selected theories from the three main streams in psychology (including personality and developmental theory), current research into neurobiology, relevant strategies, practice and coaching in appropriate intervention skills as well as education in methods for evaluating effective psychotherapeutic outcomes. The broad areas covered in each year are as follows:

For more information email Cathy Simeon our Joint Academic Co-ordinator, at cathy.simeon@metanoia.ac.uk or call her on +44 (0)20 8832 3072.

Philosophical basis of the MSc Course

We start from the position that psychotherapy is the considered and intentional use of relationship, grounded in the therapeutic alliance, in the service of the goals of the client. 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-reflexive practice, self-understanding, interpersonal encounter and a sensitivity to attunement, mis-attunement and repair in maintaining an effective therapeutic alliance. By co-creating and maintaining a clearly formulated and secure therapeutic alliance, practitioner and client alike are enabled to focus upon complex interpersonal and intrapsychic issues. 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, judgement, 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.