About: Training Program in College Student Psychotherapy at CAPS
During their stay Haverford, externs work with highly intelligent students who are reflective and often well-tuned to notions of psychological causality. The students present interesting conflicts and dilemmas and often avail themselves eagerly of psychotherapy. They also, however, frequently present with complicated situations; few are straightforward. Consequently, externs have excellent opportunities to learn psychotherapy, often in challenging situations.
Unlike most college and university counseling services, Haverford does not set a limit on the number of sessions that students may have with a therapist. Hence, externs get to work the greater part of the academic year (September through May) with several students. About 20% of the student enrollment (approx. 1200) consult with a counselor each year.
Our college service is devoted to maintaining a staff that truly works as a team. We value sharing clinical material and working collaboratively where such work is possible. Externs are expected to manage their cases with care, appreciation of confidentiality, and sensitivity to their own assumptions about what the "good life" is. We are interested in finding externs who, as persons, are interested in wondering about life, especially the "inner world", and who are able to engage others towards this end by virtue of their openness to "not knowing" and their ability to listen.
Our chief goal in our externship program is not to teach technique, but to facilitate an in-depth experience with the role of the unconscious in the communications and feelings of both the psychotherapist and client. While we expect externs to bring rigorous intellectual thinking to their work, we also expect them to be willing to question all assumptions about the meaning of symptom clusters and therapeutic interventions. Externs will receive training mostly in individual therapy. However, they may also have opportunities to run groups or conduct workshops in accordance with their interests and the needs of our college students.
Our core staff is comprised of four part-time clinical psychologists. One afternoon a week, we also have a consulting psychiatrist on campus who joins us for our case conference.
At CAPS we offer three types of training opportunities: practicums, pre-doctoral and post-doctoral externships. These opportunities vary in terms of the number of hours they entail. Practicum positions require 16 hours and extend from September through May of the academic year. The pre- and post-doctoral positions are part-time one or two year externships. They require an extern to work 16-25 hours per week, September through May. If necessary, as in the case of requirements for a post-doc to be eligible to take the licensing exam, these hours may be supplemented with outside work in order to meet the required goal of 1500 hours within two years.
All the positions, whether practicum, pre- or post-doctoral, entail two hours of individual supervision with two different supervisors, two hours of a clinical case conference, one hour group supervision and a weekly reading seminar. In past years, we have, for example, read the writings of Wilfred Bion, Donald Winiccot, Jacques Lacan, Thomas Ogden, Philip Bromberg, Masud Khan, and Jessica Benjamin. We have also chosen an area such as attachment, suicide, eating disorders and the body, or the nature of evil, and then read theory and fiction on the topic from different sources. Externs may also have an opportunity to provide one hour of supervision to a practicum student. We sometimes provide opportunities to all positions for research and/or collaboration in a writing project.
The Service usually accepts four to six externs and/or practicum students who are selected from a variety of surrounding area programs in clinical psychology, social work, and psychiatry. Interviews with selected candidates begin in February. Applicants should send a letter of introduction and resume to:
Dr. Rebecca Ergas, CAPS, Haverford College, 370 W. Lancaster Ave., Haverford, PA 19041-1392, 610-896-1290, rergas@haverford.edu