Email this article From struggle to exchange: a group of students proposes a dialogue on practical traineeship.
Abstract
This paper comes from the work of a group of eighteen students attending the master’s degree course "Clinical Psychology of the person, of organizations and of the community" at the Faculty of Medicine and Psychology of the University of Rome “Sapienza".
We have set up a laboratory on the role of practical traineeship with the chair of the Professor R.M. Paniccia, with the aim of treating this complex and controversial topic that connects reality and several social actors: agencies, Order of Psychologists, University and students.
Our goal has been thinking over training in psychology and the figure of clinical psychologist, focusing a specific time we consider relevant in our training: practical traineeship, seen as a critical event on the way that leads from the student role to the professional one.
We understand the complexity of practical traineeship if we connect it with the specificity of training in clinical psychology, where training and profession path goes through the implication in one’s experience, which allows to integrate psychological theory and practice by re-thinking the emotions experienced in relation to different contexts using clinical psychology categories.
We have decided to deal with this topic from different points of view: in the first part we introduce the reader to the current context that characterizes the practical traineeship in psychology. We present the political/normative context, then we define the methodology that we used and, at last, we discuss the characteristics of the process in which our group has been involved.
This premise allows the reader to then switch to a second part referred to the exploration of the relational dynamics established in the relationship between trainee and organization by analyzing our practical traineeship experiences. In the last part, we offer some points of discussion on the trainee’s clinical psychology function and on critical situations in meeting with agencies.
We have set up a laboratory on the role of practical traineeship with the chair of the Professor R.M. Paniccia, with the aim of treating this complex and controversial topic that connects reality and several social actors: agencies, Order of Psychologists, University and students.
Our goal has been thinking over training in psychology and the figure of clinical psychologist, focusing a specific time we consider relevant in our training: practical traineeship, seen as a critical event on the way that leads from the student role to the professional one.
We understand the complexity of practical traineeship if we connect it with the specificity of training in clinical psychology, where training and profession path goes through the implication in one’s experience, which allows to integrate psychological theory and practice by re-thinking the emotions experienced in relation to different contexts using clinical psychology categories.
We have decided to deal with this topic from different points of view: in the first part we introduce the reader to the current context that characterizes the practical traineeship in psychology. We present the political/normative context, then we define the methodology that we used and, at last, we discuss the characteristics of the process in which our group has been involved.
This premise allows the reader to then switch to a second part referred to the exploration of the relational dynamics established in the relationship between trainee and organization by analyzing our practical traineeship experiences. In the last part, we offer some points of discussion on the trainee’s clinical psychology function and on critical situations in meeting with agencies.
Copyright (c)
Rivista di Psicologia Clinica. Teoria e metodi dell'intervento
Rivista Telematica a Carattere Scientifico Registrazione presso il Tribunale civile di Roma (n.149/2006 del 17/03/2006)
ISSN 1828-9363