To date practitioners providing clinical supervision have done so on the basis of their own commitment to their personal psychoanalysis, clinical experience and peer recognition of suitability. With the emergence in our culture of expectation of formal regulation of qualifications professional bodies within the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP) have introduced the requirement that clinical supervisors on psychotherapy training programmes are required to have a formal qualification in supervision. It is expected that the launch by CORU of a State register for the title Psychotherapist will also require a University / QQI awarded  qualification in supervision. This UCD programme offers the first opportunity for experienced practitioners in the field of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis to take a formal programme that can recognise their work as supervisors of psychoanalytic practice. As importantly, if not more so, it provides the Freudian-Lacanian field here in Ireland with a locus to interrogate its understanding of supervision practised  in accordance with the principles of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis. What it  is to practice supervision in accordance with the principles of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis is not extensively elaborated in the literature but there are key texts that provide guiding questions for the programme. 

 

On-going experience of one’s own psychoanalysis: this is the cornerstone of training and practice in the psychoanalytic field. On-going engagement in one’s psychoanalysis is verified by the programme. The student arranges payment for their psychoanalysis outside of the Professional Diploma fee payment.

 

Clinical training: supervised supervisory practice: in person individual and small group supervision of supervision practice with psychoanalytic supervisees

 

Theoretical content: interrogation of the psychoanalytic literature to contribute to response to the question: what is it to practice supervision in accordance with the principles of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis?

 

Research: students produce a clinically grounded Clinical Supervision Paper which is assessed in terms of leaving the reader in no doubt but that the writer is practising supervision in accordance with the principles of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis 

 

Given that this is a clinical training in person-to-person practice physical presence for the teaching and clinical supervision is required.