Should Clinical Psychology Programs Require Students to Enroll in 45 hours of Psychotherapy?
To graduate from Alliant, Psy.D. students are required to complete at least 45 hours of psychotherapy with a licensed, independently practicing clinician within a twelve-month period. However, students who have completed these hours within five years prior to enrollment at AIU are no longer held to this requirement. Ph.D. students are not mandated to undergo psychotherapy.
By Manny González
Having just completed my 45-hour psychotherapy requirement for the Psy.D. program, I struggle to understand why so many of my colleagues are resistant in fulfilling this integral aspect of our education. While the psychologist’s job description is not exclusive to providing psychotherapy, the emphasis has been in producing CSPP graduates that are adept in all aspects of the discipline. Providing psychotherapy is key in identifying, as a clinical psychologist, as much as assessment or research.
Some may argue that the psychotherapy requirement is tantamount to the mandated therapy used in diversion programs in the criminal justice system. They argue that one cannot be forced into therapy if they have no presenting problems they feel they need to address. This resistance should be the very focus of therapy, as issues will arise, regardless of classroom or practicum training or education. A very popular therapeutic topic is counter-transference, which becomes so much more contextually rich when one experiences the transference that occurs as a client.
I find that actively participating as a client in psychotherapy is as important in our process of becoming psychologists as practicum training. Practicum training offers us en vivo clinical instruction much more than we would ever be able to learn in a strictly didactic setting. Yet the supplement to this education is in actively participating in the role as client and recipient of psychotherapeutic services.
Having undergone a year of individual therapy with an alumnus of the program, I began to understand the complexities of the relationship forged between therapist and client. In what other way can one truly empathize with a client than to have experienced it first hand? If the therapeutic dyad is one of the key determinants of a positive outcome, how can psychologists be truly efficacious in providing services having never undergone the very service they are providing? It also begs the question, “Is it ethical for a psychologist to be truly competent if they are not trained in all aspects in the psychotherapeutic process?”
There are also unforeseen benefits in having psychotherapy as a requisite in our clinical training. Upon graduating and becoming licensed, many of us want to pursue a private practice within a highly competitive marketplace. Alumni of the program are afforded the unique advantage of providing their services, at a discounted rate, to current students of the program who seek to fulfill the psychotherapy requirement. In beginning to form a strong clientele base in a private practice, alumni receive the benefit of supplementing their income while experiencing the work with a different population.
By Zoë Brew
The mandatory psychotherapy requirement dictates that students must complete 45 sessions of individual introspection within a year. While contemplating the direction of this debate, channeling the arguments of my opponent, sizing him up and planning my perfectly timed punches, my mind kept circling around the word mandatory… Wait! Doesn’t this forced participation exist in direct opposition to how we think about psychotherapy? Isn’t rule one of Psych Club the idea that clients must enter the therapeutic relationship when they are ready? Unless of course, you’re in County Jail and a psych intern is asking you about your mother while you are handcuffed to a chair, or a psychology graduate student, in which case your readiness has been pre-determined for you. It appears that we are prisoners of our curriculum. Should we throw on our orange jumpsuits now or later?
But, to quote the infamous last words of fellow convict and Australian bushranger Ned Kelly before he swung from the gallows, “such is life.” We’re in graduate school and unless we want those mounting financial aid debts to be in vain, we must adhere to the establishment. Just give me a jargony façade to appease my dwindling bank account as a sign my weekly check for Dr. Whoever. 
Tell me how lucky I am that I pay on a sliding scale. Tell me that it will make me a better clinician. Let me swallow down my sweet placebo, yummm, tastes good… Hold on, if this is such a valuable learning experience why isn’t our adventure of self-discovery accounted for in that government allowance that subsidizes our education? Is this mounting financial debt the bitter aftertaste?
Pros aside, is therapy for would-be-therapists really therapy? Shouldn’t we know what we are paying for? Why don’t we take a sobering look at the nature of this interaction before we choose the blue pill? We already possess psychological abilities. We see things differently. Others perceive our role somewhere between doctor and mind reader; our abilities are real and imagined. And we need this. As clinicians, the suggestion of power, authority, and awareness go a long way (like it or not, Milgram had a point).
So when a client walks into the therapist’s office, they are fuelled by expectations that the psychologist is infallible. The idea of the all-seeing, all-knowing demigod is what keeps them coming back. We on the other hand, are not so easily fooled. We know some of the tricks and end up existing somewhere between colleague and client. We are schooling ourselves, learning by imitation—noticing the style of their questioning/their posture/their open-ended soliciting rejoinders and adopting them as our own. Would I be gauche to suggest that this intensive observation might change the natural flow of therapy? That we compare their responses against what we would say? That our education might just make therapy an intellectualized competitive sport?
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