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Education & TrainingFull Access

What Works and What Doesn't in Teaching Psychotherapy to Residents

Published Online:15 Jul 2011https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.46.14.psychnews_46_14_16_2

Educators and experts in psychodynamic psychotherapy offered these ideas about teaching psychotherapy to residents at APA's 2011 annual meeting in May at the symposium "Teaching Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in an Era of Neuroscience."

What Works

  • Having one person responsible for coordinating the psychotherapy teaching.

  • Providing time and funds for residents to have personal psychoanalysis or intensive psychotherapy.

  • Involving psychoanalysts in residency training.

  • Providing clinical experiences in which residents are therapists with regular one-on-one supervision.

What Doesn't Work

  • Teaching that artificially separates "mind" and "brain".

  • Teaching the "med check" as operating outside the influence of psychotherapeutic principles.

  • Disparaging other therapies instead of looking at commonalities.

  • Ignoring research relevant to psychotherapy.

  • Failing to illustrate psychodynamic theories with clinical case examples.