Tavistock&PortmanNHSFoundationTrust和TavistockConsulting

Course overview

This is the UK’s first Psychoanalytic Studies course with roots in the British School of Psychoanalysis and the Tavistock model of infant and young child observation. The emphasis of this creative course is on learning from experience and you will be encouraged to use your own emotional responses and cultural knowledge, as well as the learnt theory, to help make sense of the ideas that you will be studying. The course has a history of welcoming overseas students from a range of professional backgrounds, and re-extends its welcome to BAME, LGBTQI+ and other minority members whose lived experiences enrich the use of psychoanalysis as a tool to understand any object of study.

Course outline

Alongside the in-depth study of the origin and development of psychoanalytic concepts you will learn through observation and explore the application of psychoanalysis to aspects of culture and society. You will be encouraged to use your own emotional responses to help you make sense of the ideas that you will be studying. After completing the first year of the course, you can leave the programme at the end of year two with a Postgraduate Diploma.

The course consists of three strands:

• observation
• psychoanalytic theory
• psychoanalytic theory as a mode of enquiry into culture and society.

Who is this course for?

If you are interested in learning about psychoanalytic ideas and their application to the arts, politics and literature, or just learn more about them. . You may do this course out of interest or already be a practicing clinician who wants to inform your professional practice or considering clinical training in the future.

We have welcomed students from a variety of backgrounds including law, medicine, the arts and journalism. Many have taken this course to gain a substantial and wide-ranging introduction to psychoanalysis and its applications.

Why study this course with us?

This world renowned course has been running for over 20 years and will equip you with an in-depth understanding of psychoanalytic theory and its potential applications to other fields. It will enable you to make links between theory and your own experience of watching unconscious processes unfold by undertaking an observation of a baby or young child. Crucially, it will offer you the opportunity to think about how an understanding of emotional states can contribute to our understanding of culture and society.

You will also benefit from being taught by senior clinicians as well as academics who have developed particular interest in the applications of psychoanalysis to culture and society over a minimum of three seminars a week during term time (six seminars a week for full-time students). You will have the use of an extensive library which is used by all students and staff and you can also join clinical seminars or workshops in a programme called Psychoanalysis in Practice.

The emphasis of this creative course is on learning from experience and you will be encouraged to use your own emotional responses, as well as theory, to help you make sense of the ideas that you will be studying. You will have a generous amount of time with your tutors, many of whom are practicing clinicians.