Bringing Psychoanalytic Thinking to a Contemporary Clinical Psychology Training Programme: A Personal Perspective on a Dynamic Process

This paper traces the stimulating and encouraging experience of two decades of bringing a psychoanalytic frame to clinical psychologists in training in an Irish university setting. I am taking this as one area in which our work of reaching over between psychoanalysis and other fields can be fruitful. Starting with a portrayal of the nature of this training, including its central components and the demands it makes on trainees, I consider how the psychoanalytic classes I have engaged in with trainees have been organised, and the observations I have made about what has been useful in these, and the kinds of themes that have arisen. This work has instilled a belief in the value of a psychoanalytic approach to help to develop an overall understanding of what we meet in clinical services – a person, presenting with a symptom, carrying meaning, and requiring attention and allowing for a wider exploration of the place it has in the person’s life. I describe some of the struggles experienced by trainees in this compressed training, and the assistance that psychoanalytic thinking can have in this. I draw out five themes that have arisen within my work: (1) Toying with a symmetrical approach; (2) Reflection without pressure to act; (3) A joy in found ideas; (4) Finding meaning in distress; and (5) Valuing the freedom to think.