How to become a psychotherapist
- On Becoming a Psychotherapist
- Book edited by Windy Dryden and Laurence Spurling (has Serach Inside preview). Also available as an e-book.
- Becoming
a Psychotherapist: A Clinical Primer
- Book by Rosemary Marshall Balsam and Alan Balsam.
- How to train to be a Psychotherapist (PDF file)
- From the UKCP (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy)
- How did You Become a Transactional Analyst?
- by Fanita English
- Why Become an Existential Psychotherapist?
- From Depth Psychotherapy Network
- A troubled past, a bright future
- From BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) - see also their Careers in Counselling page.
- How do I become a psychotherapist?
- From Guardian newspaper, November 2004.
- Psychotherapist and Counsellor
- UK careers advice from LearnDirect.
- What are the Differences Between Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Psychotherapists
- From UK NHS Careers. Related topics on this site include:
Entry requirements for psychology
Entry requirements for psychotherapy
Financial support during child psychotherapy training
Financial support during psychology training
How do i apply for child psychotherapy courses?
How do i apply for psychology training?
Pay and benefits for psychologists
Psychology (continuing professional development)
Training as a child psychotherapist
Training as a psychologist
What does a psychologist do?
What does a psychotherapist do?
What types of allied health professionals are there?
My reasons for training as a therapist
This is how I expressed my reasons (slightly edited for confidentiality) for wanting to train in psychotherapy on my application. They are not expressed as a narrative, but are a splatter gun of reasons, reflecting the different motivations that I have.
1. The Alchemist's dream
I want to convert my own base experiences into gold. How affirming a life narrative would that be? To take everything that has been wounding and harmful in my life, and convert that to a well of strength to draw on as a part of a potent healing process. Sounds golden to me.
2. Exploring the road not travelled
After I graduated I was offered two jobs in the same week. The one I turned down was as a Residential Care Worker helping to look after children in care. It was a route into the caring professions. But instead I followed a different path. Naturally, this has led me to both wonder what might have been, and feel that this compassionate side of me has been under expressed. So this is an opportunity to come back and explore that road not travelled.
3. Growing a new limb
Transactional Analysis, for the first time, has given me a frame of reference to understand people. Instead of being on a bumper-car ride, haphazardly colliding into people, I now feel I have some foresight into people, not just hindsight. It feels like growing a new limb, a new ability, and I want to give that new limb a good workout, to grow it and strengthen it.
4. If we are going to do this, let's do it properly
Self help is helpful, but isn't all the help that is out there. Sure, I can read widely and think often of my situation. This has been great. It has felt like being a teenager again: (re)asking all the major existential questions about life, identity and purpose. But having committed myself wholeheartedly to change, it's obvious that I would want to access all possible resources to help me. So during training the teachers, the experiential exercises, the discipline of formal study, and particularly the sharing with fellow students will help me to do this properly (whatever properly means).
5. Certificates aren't just bits of paper
No one was injured by over validation. I want to be able to show off what I have learnt, and be externally acknowledged for the progress I have made, the skills and knowledge I have acquired.
6. A new career option
As I may have to work for another twenty years, it is attractive to have an alternative career option, one that maybe, but need not be full time, need not be mediated by bureaucracy, need not stop after retirement age, and one that makes important interventions to help people in their lives. It might not be a path to worldly riches, but it could offer some "good days at the office".
7. Sharing what I've learned
It would seem selfish to know what I now know — that you don't have to hobble through life carrying your wounds, that you are OK and that you have the wit to decide to be different — and not want to share that. I have a slightly messianic desire to rush up to people and tell them that they have options. Psychotherapy training will take that impulse, and hone it into something directed, safe, and appropriate.
8. Studying, not just reading
I respect professionalism, and want to switch from an amateur enthusiasm into a professional commitment. I recognise that there is a difference between reading (a passive activity) and studying (an active one). And I want to move from knowing a bit about psychotherapy, to having a deep and sophisticated internalised mental model of it.
9. Messing with people's heads can be dangerous
A little knowledge is, so the aphorism goes, a dangerous thing — although I suspect that it's actually when there's total ignorance that there's usually more of a problem. Either way, keeping me and client protected is a central skill. I would not feel happy about even trying to offer counselling to people without being properly trained to keep us both safe.
10. Because I want to
I want to do it! It'll be fun! It'll be a roller-coaster! It'll be intense! It'll have heaps of positive strokes! It'll have loads of activities! It'll be sad and fearful and angry and happy: but real and authentic! It'll be friendly and kind! It'll be dramatic! It'll be a bit like relearning the fundamentals again, but with more brains and bigger words.
