UKCP Accreditation for Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and IPSS Membership
IPSS welcomes new Members IPSS Membership UKCP Accreditation
IPSS Forums and CPD IPSS Forums and CPD
Chair's Welcome
As Chair, I would like to welcome you to the Institute of Psychotherapy and Social Studies (IPSS). We are a member’s organisation of the UKCP and welcome psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapists looking for a new home and trainees who wish to complete their accreditation.
The IPSS was founded in 1978 and we have a long history of training and accrediting psychoanalytic psychotherapists and more recently psychodynamic psychotherapists in accordance with UKCP standards. While we are psychoanalytic in our approach to psychotherapy, we also have a tradition of incorporating humanistic, interpersonal and object relations theories. Our inner experience is impacted by the social, cultural, political, and economic environment that we and our partners, family and friends inhabit. To grasp this, we must look outwards and consider how our histories have consciously and unconsciously influenced our capacity as therapists to empathise and understand the experiences and suffering of others. An awareness of the social, cultural, and political context within which psychotherapy takes place forms an integral part of IPPS’s approach.
Recently Black Lives Matter and the Me-too Movement have encouraged us to examine how social structures, cultural norms and institutions often marginalise and contribute to injustice and inequalities. This will of course impact on people’s bodily and mental health. COVID-19 has highlighted how death rates and the effects of this disease has had a disproportionate economic, educational, or emotional impact on people from ethnic minorities. Many interactions in society are often about power and privilege, and who, in ways that may not be transparent, exercises that power.
So, in our work as therapists, it is important for us to be aware of these factors. That’s why at IPSS, as an organisation, we emphasise the social dimension in our practice of psychotherapy, and we want to welcome people from differing backgrounds and those interested in finding a new professional home as practicing psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapists.
If this is of interest to you, do look at our UKCP Accreditation page, and, IPSS Forums and CPD. To find out more about our organisation and the possibility of IPSS Membership, why not come to one of our Forums? If you would like to talk to our administrator, Paola Turner, please get in touch.
I look forward to welcoming you.
Jane Rushton
IPSS Chair
