Learn psychotherapy

…‘Psychodynamic’ describes how the psyche is continuously active, constantly humming with life, with feelings and thoughts, both when we are awake and when we are asleep, even when we are seriously focusing on reading a book: memories are recalled, feelings are aroused, ideas tumble around.” – Michael Jacobs

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a robust, evidence‑based treatment approach, supported by multiple studies with large and diverse patient samples. It remains, however, something many clinicians encounter only briefly, if at all, in their post‑graduate training.

This program is designed to offer a grounded, clinically useful introduction to key psychodynamic concepts and techniques: how to think in a psychodynamic way, how to develop a formulation that goes beyond symptoms, how to set up the frame to support deeper work, and how to keep the focus on the processes that actually drive change. Our discussions will be anchored in selected readings and case material, so that ideas are consistently linked to clinical practice.

The program is highly practical, therefore, it is recommended that students have some counseling experience. This program is not recommended for school leavers or as an initial foray into counseling education.

What we will cover

  • Unconscious processes, defence and repetition
    How symptoms, defences, and enactments express unconscious meaning; working with repetition in the transference rather than only “insight”.
  • Transference, countertransference, hate and the “bad analyst”
    Transference–countertransference as a central clinical tool; hate in the countertransference (Winnicott, Epstein), the “bad analyst feeling”, and how to use these affects ethically rather than defensively.
  • Object relations: object use and enlivening the object
    Winnicott’s “Use of an Object”, destruction and survival; how patients move from relating to using objects; enlivening vs deadening objects in the analytic relationship and what that means for frame and technique.
  • Attachment, mentalization and the secure base
    Clinical implications of attachment (secure base, survivor guilt, loyalty to early objects); Fonagy/Wallin on mentalization and reflective functioning; the therapist as a secure base in different attachment styles.
  • Dreams and unconscious communication
    “Potholes on the Royal Road” and Wolf‑Man material: using dreams in relational work, limits of classical dream technique, and how dreams express unformulated experience and enactment fields.
  • Race, class, culture and ethnotransference
    Race/class in transference–countertransference; racial difference, rupture and repair; culture and “locating” the analytic pair; hazards of ethnotransference and racialized ghosts that refuse to become ancestors.
  • Gender, sexuality and the body
    Suchet’s “Crossing Over”, Greenacre’s “Mourning the body as bedrock”, and Porchat‑Santos on cisgender countertransferential fantasies in work with transgender patients; sexed embodiment, body hatred, and the body as a site of meaning rather than just “symptom”.
  • Development, latency, fear and melancholia
  • Diagnosis, formulation and clinical thinking
    McWilliams on why we diagnose (and also “Diagnosis and its Discontents”); using psychodynamic diagnosis to think about people rather than labels; integrating diagnosis with formulation and treatment planning.
  • Frame, enactment and ethics of countertransference
    Bass on when the frame doesn’t fit the picture and on enactments; reading on the ethics of desire and responsibility in countertransference; how money, boundaries, timing and setting become part of the relational field and a locus of change.

  • Termination, continuity and “it ain’t over”
    Salberg on “leaning in” to termination; Bass and Bonovitz on how termination never really ends; thinking about endings as a phase of treatment, a repetition, and a transition rather than a simple cut‑off.

  • From theory to practice in Sri Lankan contexts
    Across the year we return repeatedly to: clinical listening, psychodynamic case formulation, use of self and countertransference, and application to real work with Sri Lankan clients and trainees (individual/couples, trauma, workplace mental health), with attention to culture, class, and rights‑based practice.

Course Fee and Terms

  • Rs. 24,000 per trimester payable at the beginning of each trimester
  • Duration: 1 year
  • Format: online
  • Class times: Fridays 5pm-6.30pm
  • Commencement: 7 August 2026
  • Certificate issued at the end of the program for those with more than 90% class presence. Video joining is required.