AGIP

Groupwork

AGIP does not provide a training in group psychotherapy.

There is one group associated with the course running throughout the theoretical seminar course. This a weekly psychoanalytically-based group which provides an experiential setting for the exploration of various group perspectives. For most trainees the group runs for the full four years of the course.

AGIP believes that experience within the group is vital to the training of psychotherapists. It adds a significant dimension to both the personal therapeutic work being undertaken and to the overall understanding of the psychoanalytic process.

The analytic group provides an experience from which to reflect upon and examine group dynamics and gain some understanding of the application of psychoanalytic thinking within the group context.

The group experience complements the individual's experience of personal psychotherapy and offers a supportive framework for trainees in coping with the pressures of training and starting work with patients. It also fosters the development of mutually rewarding and validating relationships and opens up the possibility of co-operation and collaboration between future colleagues.

During 2006/7 UKCP undertook its quinquennial (five-yearly) review of the AGIP training. The following is an extract concerning the groupwork at AGIP from their final report:
AGIP is distinguished by the inclusion of a slow-open experiential (analytic) group throughout the four year period of the seminars. All the trainees we met found this to be of great value . . The regular analytic group also makes for a certain intensity which helps to air and contain some of the inevitable anxieties that the trainee will experience."

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