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Mission Statement

The School of Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology aims are

• To provide a professional foundation for psychotherapy, counselling and counselling psychology, striking a balance between theoretical and experiential dimensions of learning;
  
• To emphasise the comparative study of psychotherapeutic theories and techniques whilst paying attention to the philosophical assumptions underlying the theories being considered and the philosophical coherence of those theories;
  
• To provide students with the intellectual common ground between psychotherapy, counselling and counselling psychology and thereby to contribute to the rationalisation and consolidation of these emerging professions;
  
• To facilitate an emotional engagement on the part of the student with the subject matter under consideration;
  
• To produce graduates who think independently, are theoretically well informed and able skilfully and ethically to apply the methods of psychotherapy and counselling in practice, in the belief that knowledge advances through criticism and debate, rather than by uncritical adherence to received wisdom;
  
• To foster a sensitivity to and awareness of prejudice, in ourselves and in others, towards issues of difference in response to students, clients, and colleagues and in approach to clients' material. These issues include racism, gender, sexual preference, ageism, cultural and ethnic difference, disabilities and class.

The Integrative Attitude

The underlying ethos upon which rests the whole of SPCP's educational and training programme is its Integrative Attitude which can be summarised as follows:

• No single perspective or set of underlying values and assumptions is universally shared in current psychotherapeutic thought and practice. The School therefore advocates a non-doctrinaire 'Integrative Attitude' throughout all of its courses.
  
• This attitude allows competing and diverse models to be considered both conceptually and experientially so that their areas of interface and divergence can be exposed, considered and clarified. The aim is to highlight the value of holding the tension between contrasting and often contradictory ideas, of 'playing with' their experiential possibilities and of allowing a paradoxical security which can 'live with' and at times even thrive in the absence of final and fixed truths.
  
• The school believes that this deliberate engagement with difference should be reflected in the manner in which the faculty relate to students, clients and colleagues at all levels. We are hopeful that this philosophical, impartial and innovative attitude will both inspire and appeal to those students who are planning to gain professional psychotherapy accreditation.