Course summary

Our new Graduate Certificate in Foundation for Counselling and Psychotherapy Training has been designed to provide you with a pathway to full clinical training as a counsellor or psychotherapist. It is suitable for those working within the helping professions who have completed our Introduction to Counselling course, or equivalent. You will learn about key concepts in counselling and psychotherapy with a focus on the psychodynamic method and psychosocial/organisational perspectives. You will be taught the significance of developmental life stages and the impact of these on the counselling relationship. You will also develop counselling skills in practical listening exercises and engage in a process of personal development through various experiential learning activities. On completion of this counselling and psychotherapy training, you will be equipped with knowledge and understanding about the principles of counselling, developmental issues and psychodynamic theory and method. You will also have gained important foundational listening skills and have begun to develop the emotional sensibility necessary to apply to clinical training. Highlights

• Successful completion of this foundational course offers you the chance to apply for clinical training at Birkbeck with our MSc Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy and MSc Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents.

• Our counselling courses are taught by experienced and practising clinicians.

• Birkbeck has 50 years' experience of teaching psychodynamic counselling and practice and an excellent reputation with employers.

• We have a distinctive multidisciplinary psychosocial perspective with academics coming from backgrounds in anthropology, cultural and postcolonial studies, education studies, gender and sexuality studies, literary studies, critical psychology, psychoanalytic studies and sociology.