Training in psychoanalysis
I have been involved in the training of psychotherapists since 2002. I coordinated The Site UKCP registered training in London until I moved to Cornwall in 2006. I have now established the first UKCP training organisation in the county – The Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis www.sscp.uk
The SSCP offers a training that is unusual in the attention it pays to the historical, philosophical and political contexts of the development of psychoanalysis. The training places critique at its centre, fostering in the students a spirit of passionate enquiry into the diversity and complexity of therapeutic work and relationships. Rather than being rooted in one body of psychoanalytic thought, the training interrogates the different psychoanalytic schools – Lacanian, Object Relations, Kleinian, Relational, Jungian, post-Freudian – and the different clinical practices they have produced.
Central to the ethos of SSCP – and reflected in our name – is the social field in which all psychoanalytic practice is both constructed, developed and undertaken. We make central how the specificities of race, gender, sexual orientation, class and disabilities shape and form the people who come to clinical work. These categories operate unequally, favouring certain identities and disadvantaging others. We consider an awareness of and an address to, these power dynamics to be foundational to the clinical encounter.
We also recognise the historical position of psychoanalysis as a largely urban practice, and so in Cornwall we encourage an exploration of the relevance of psychoanalytic and critical thought specifically to the experience of rural and coastal environments. We also offer a consideration of the politics of the environment within the context of the contemporary climate emergency and how this impacts upon clinical work.
During the 4-year training, students are encouraged to develop their own individual positions as psychoanalysts, with an ability to self-question and self-reflect in the clinical encounter being fundamental.
All students who qualify with the SSCP are eligible for registration with the UKCP.
