Core Competencies in Depth Psychology Emphasis in Psychotherapy
Core competencies are the processes students use to achieve the learning outcomes of the program. They are the "how" or the means by which students achieve learning outcomes. Some of these competencies are also used as specific activities through which to assess a student’s mastery of the learning outcomes. Core competencies may be emergent in an applicant or highly developed. The admissions process screens for aptitude regarding many of these core competencies. Engaged learning in the Depth Psychotherapy Program further develops, strengthens, and extends these competencies.
1. Spirit of inquiry (inquiring attitude/orientation, curiosity, wonder, excitement at the unfolding of understanding, capacity to create and hold generative questions, mindful collecting of relevant knowledge, openness to learning and developing methods of inquiry that are generative to understanding and desired transformation)
2. Listening skills (capacity to engage silence; capacity to open a space where the other—be it to one’s own thoughts, feelings and body, to another human, animal, imaginal other, or to the built or natural environment-- can come forward; ability to track what emerges; being sensitive to the unspoken and to the silenced through one’s own bodily state and intuition and through attention to the other; ability tobe aware of the interference of one’s own thoughts, emotions, and possible projections; empathic attunement; ability to engage multiple perspectives, even when conflictual)
3. Knowledge (ability to acquire, to mindfully use, to integrate across disciplinary boundaries, critique/deconstruct/demystify, create/construct/generate knowledge; to understand knowledge as reflective of particular locations and as constructed with certain purposes/aims; interest in discerning how and why particular knowings areconstructed; critical thinking/problem solving; creative ability to construct knowledge to support specifiable aims for transformation; ability to articulate knowledge gained effectively in writing and speaking skills)
4. Capacity for self-reflection and psychological mindedness (ability to still oneself in order to perceive one’s thoughts, feelings, and bodily states; capacity for self-analysis; ability to access and to reflect on “unconscious” processes; ability to mindfully observe and evaluate one’s modes of interacting with others; capacity for reflexivity, for receiving feedback from others on one’s thoughts and work; capacity to stand back and
reflect on psychological dynamics, to look to the margins of awareness for insight, to look past surface presentations for deeper meanings)
5. Poesis, creativity, and imagination (openness to the emergence of image and metaphor, sensitivity to symbolic meanings, ability to shift frames and to break restrictive frames in order to see and to represent freshly, ability to see through analogy; insightfulness)
6. Personal integration of theory and practice (ability to convey congruence between depth psychological principles and lived experience as a psychotherapist; ethical discernment; development of capacities for teamwork/relationship, including conflict resolution and transformation)
7. Global awareness (awareness of one’s own cultural and historical location, appreciation for the diversity of cultural experiences, sense of interdependent co-arising, awareness of cultural blindness—of the gap between one’s own life experiences and one’s understanding of others with radically different experiences, appreciation for the effects of globalization on local communities and cultures, approaches to dialogue that invite awareness of difference to promote deepened understanding)
8. Ecological awareness (awareness of the interdependence between humans, the built environment, and natural ecosystems; capacity to listen to built and natural worlds; trans-species awareness)
