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..
The unconscious, defences and the therapeutic relationship
This six-hour CPD course offers a rigorous introduction to psychodynamic thinking for counsellors, trainees and clinicians from other modalities who wish to integrate its core concepts into practice. The first module examines the dynamic model of the mind, focusing on unconscious process, internal conflict and the ego defences that shape everyday functioning and clinical presentation. Participants will learn to identify common defence mechanisms such as repression, projection, splitting and projective identification, and to recognise how these operate within the therapeutic encounter. The second module explores developmental and object relations theory, tracing the formation of internal object worlds from early attachment experiences and showing how these patterns re-emerge in the transference-countertransference matrix. Attention is given to the therapeutic relationship as the primary vehicle of change, including the psychodynamic stance of listening beneath the surface, the management of enactments, and the ethical use of countertransference as a clinical tool.
Teaching combines didactic presentation, case illustration and guided reflective exercises, enabling learners to apply psychodynamic formulation to assessment, contracting and ongoing work. By the end of the course participants will be able to construct a basic psychodynamic case formulation, recognise defensive processes in session, and begin to work with transference phenomena in a contained manner. No prior psychodynamic training is required, and the course aligns with current evidence-based practice guidelines for psychodynamic psychotherapy.
▶ 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 a Foundation course in the psychodynamic pathway. It assumes nothing: it is written for someone meeting the approach for the first time. What it adds is the working model, its vocabulary and its evidence base, so that the Practitioner course can assume them; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.
The psychodynamic pathway. The working model of mind and the therapeutic relationship as contemporary psychodynamic therapy uses them, taught for practice: foundations, working psychodynamically with clients, then advanced practice.
6 study hours6 CPD hours certified6 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Trace psychodynamic thought from Freud through object relations to attachment and relational schools
✓Explain unconscious process, defence and internal object relations in contemporary language
✓Describe the frame and analytic attitude: reliability, neutrality rightly understood, and abstinence rightly understood
✓Recognise transference, countertransference and enactment in clinical vignettes
✓Use the two triangles to read clinical material psychodynamically
✓Distinguish psychodynamic therapy from psychoanalysis and state what each offers whom
What you will study
Module 1: The dynamic model of mind
Unconscious process, conflict and the ego defences.
The unconscious and internal conflictThe dynamic unconscious
The ego defencesMature and immature defences
The Clinical Manifestation of ResistanceResistance is the clinical manifestation of unconscious conflict and ego defence mechanisms.
Transference and Countertransference: The Relational Core of Psychodynamic WorkTransference is the client’s unconscious projection of past relational patterns onto the therapist, offering a direct route to unconscious conflict.
Interpretation in Psychodynamic Therapy: Theory, Technique, and Clinical ApplicationInterpretation bridges unconscious material and conscious insight, fostering therapeutic change.
Module 2: Development and the relationship
Object relations and the beginnings of transference.
Developmental and object-relations ideasEarly relationships internalised
Transference and countertransferenceTransference defined
The Internalisation of Early Objects and Their Influence on Emerging TransferenceEarly internal objects are affect‑laden mental representations formed through infant‑caregiver interactions that shape later relational patterns.
Interpretation of Transference in the Therapeutic RelationshipThe interpretation of transference is the primary tool for working with unconscious patterns in the therapy room.
The Therapeutic Frame: Structure, Boundaries, and Their Influence on Transference in Psychodynamic PracticeThe therapeutic frame functions as a holding environment that mirrors early caregiving experiences.
What's included
2 modules and 10 lessons
An 8-question final assessment, with a 70% pass mark
A certificate for 6 CPD hours when you pass it
An extended clinical case study with discussion questions
A glossary of key terms
Private notes, a reflection for each module, and a CPD log you can print or save as a PDF
📖 Written lessons with key points and practice tasks◆ Visual teaching diagrams🎥 Video where it helps🎧 Listen-to-this-lesson narration👩⚕️ A full clinical case study🧠 AI tutor in every lesson📄 Full course workbook (PDF) on completion📕 The course book (PDF) while you study, with your name in it
Speak the language: by the end you will use The unconscious · Defence mechanism · Transference · Countertransference · Object relations · Internal working model · Projective identification · Containment · The frame · Resistance and more, precisely.
The evidence base this course draws on
Malan, D. H. (1995) Individual Psychotherapy and the Science of Psychodynamics. 2nd edn. London: Butterworth-Heinemann. view source ↗
Lemma, A. (2016) Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. 2nd edn. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. view source ↗
Winnicott, D. W. (1965) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press. view source ↗
Casement, P. (1985) On Learning from the Patient. London: Tavistock. view source ↗
Shedler, J. (2010) 'The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy', American Psychologist, 65(2), pp. 98–109. view source ↗
