At Talking Therapies UK, we are passionate about equipping professionals with the knowledge, confidence, and compassion to support mental health across diverse settings. With decades of combined experience in clinical practice, public health leadership, and service transformation, our training programmes are rooted in evidence-based approaches and real-world application.
We specialise in delivering high-impact, trauma-informed mental health training tailored to the needs of health, education, social care, and voluntary sector teams. From safeguarding and suicide prevention to emotional resilience and therapeutic communication, our courses are designed to empower practitioners at every level—whether you’re frontline staff, a strategic commissioner, or part of a multi-agency partnership.
Our facilitators bring many years clinical expertise , and a deep understanding of the social determinants of mental health. We prioritise co-production, reflective practice, and inclusive learning environments that foster curiosity, empathy, and professional growth.
Whether you’re looking to upskill your workforce, embed mental health into your organisational culture, or meet statutory training requirements, we offer flexible delivery formats including in-person workshops, webinars, and bespoke consultancy.
Together, we can build psychologically safe, responsive systems that promote wellbeing, reduce inequalities, and improve outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. Let’s shape the future of mental health—one conversation, one training, one transformation at a time..
Using psychoanalytic ideas in contemporary practice
This advanced Continuing Professional Development course is designed for experienced clinicians seeking to deepen their professional practice through the rigorous application of psychoanalytic theory. It moves beyond foundational knowledge to explore how complex concepts such as transference, countertransference, and enactment manifest in real-world clinical encounters, offering a sophisticated toolkit for navigating the nuances of the therapeutic relationship. Learners will engage deeply with the clinical use of containment, examining how this fundamental concept stabilises the therapeutic process and supports the patient's capacity to manage affect. The curriculum specifically addresses the management of enactment, guiding practitioners in identifying and working through moments where internal conflicts are played out between analyst and patient, thereby transforming potential ruptures into opportunities for insight and repair.
Beyond the one-to-one dyad, this course extends psychoanalytic thinking to the broader organisational context, exploring its application within institutions, teams, and reflective practice groups. Participants will study how unconscious processes influence group dynamics and institutional culture, equipping them with the skills to foster a more attuned and psychologically informed working environment. A critical component of the syllabus involves a rigorous examination of the evidence base for psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies, encouraging a balanced and honest appraisal of their efficacy alongside other modalities. Furthermore, the course addresses the stringent ethical and boundary considerations inherent in the tradition, ensuring that practitioners maintain the highest standards of professional conduct while integrating these advanced concepts into their daily work.
▶ See inside the digital classroom1 minute 36 seconds · how a course is laid out, how each lesson is taught, and how the tutor helps
Before you start
This is an Advanced course in the psychoanalytic pathway. It assumes that you already work with the approach at Practitioner level and want complexity, process and supervision-level thinking rather than the method itself, which is what Psychoanalytic Foundations teaches. What it adds is complex presentations, comorbidity, ruptures and impasses, the research and process literature, and the judgement needed to supervise or lead the work; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.
A caution. Taking an Advanced course without the foundational understanding will make it harder to follow and to complete, and you will get less from it. If you are new to this approach, begin at Foundation; if you hold the foundations but have not yet used the approach with clients, begin with Psychoanalytic Foundations. Choose the level that matches your existing experience and knowledge.
The psychoanalytic pathway. Psychoanalysis proper rather than its psychodynamic descendants: the schools, their concepts and their method at Foundation, then applied psychoanalytic thinking beyond the consulting room at Advanced. It runs alongside the psychodynamic pathway and covers different ground.
14 study hours14 CPD hours certified12 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Apply analytic concepts in once-weekly and time-limited settings honestly
✓Use brief dynamic models, including Malan's and Davanloo-informed focus, with selection care
✓Work analytically in organisations: consultation, groups and institutional dynamics
✓Apply analytic understanding to supervision and reflective practice
✓Relate analytic ideas to neighbouring evidence, from attachment research to mentalizing
✓Judge which clients need intensity you cannot offer, and refer well
What you will study
Module 1: Transference, Enactment, and the Analytic Frame
This module explores core psychoanalytic concepts including transference, countertransference, containment, and the technical management of enactments.
Transference, countertransference and enactmentClinical transference and countertransference
Containment across settingsContainment defined
Interpretation and the 'Here-and-Now' of the TransferenceThe 'here-and-now' of the analytic relationship is the primary site for identifying and interpreting transference.
The Analytic Third: Co‑Construction of Meaning in Transference and EnactmentThe Analytic Third is a co‑constructed intersubjective field that mediates transference and enactments.
The Technical Management of Enactment: Silence, Holding and the Failure of Interpretation1. Recognise when interpretation has become part of the enactment and requires a shift to a holding stance.
Module 2: Attachment, Resistance, and Embodied Communication
This module examines projective identification, attachment-informed practice, resistance, the therapeutic alliance, and non-verbal communications.
Projective Identification: Clinical Recognition and Containment in the Transference‑Enactment MatrixProjective identification is a bidirectional process in which the patient evacuates intolerable affect into the therapist, who experiences it as his own.
Attachment‑Informed Psychodynamic Practice: Internal Working Models, Transference, and EnactmentAttachment styles shape internal working models that manifest in transference and enactment.
Resistance in the Transference‑Enactment Matrix: Clinical Recognition, Interpretation and ContainmentResistance is a relational defence that manifests as a discrepancy between expressed wishes and underlying affect.
The Therapeutic Alliance in Psychodynamic Practice: Conceptualisation, Assessment, and Intervention within the Transference‑Enactment MatrixThe therapeutic alliance is a dynamic, co‑created partnership that integrates bond, goals, and tasks, and serves as a container for transference and enactment.
Embodied Communication and Non‑Verbal Enactments in the Transference‑Enactment MatrixEmbodied attunement involves synchronising the therapist’s affective and physiological state with the patient’s, facilitating containment and mentalisation.
Module 3: Institutional Dynamics and Psychodynamic Supervision
This module applies psychoanalytic thinking to institutions, supervision, regulatory functions, and quality assurance.
Psychoanalytic thinking in institutionsInstitutions and the unconscious
Evidence and ethicsThe evidence base, honestly
The Third as a Regulatory Function: Managing the Institutional MatrixThe "Third" functions as a regulatory space between the patient, analyst, and institution, mediating the impact of organisational demands on the analytic frame.
The Supervisor as a Containing Function: Sustaining the Practitioner within the Institutional MatrixThe supervisory relationship occupies a central place in the maintenance of psychoanalytic work within the complex lattice of contemporary service provision. Wh…
Institutional Audit and Quality Assurance: A Psychodynamic Lens on Evidence and EthicsInstitutional audit is a psychodynamic process that uncovers unconscious organisational dynamics behind quantitative data.
Module 4: Ethics, Diversity, and the Analyst's Unconscious
This module investigates cultural diversity, digital environments, power dynamics, and the analyst's unconscious in ethical decision-making.
Cultural and Diversity Considerations in Psychodynamic Evidence and Ethical PracticeCultural context is a constitutive element of psychic structure, not a peripheral variable to be controll
