Wessex Counselling & Psychotherapy (WCP) is a not for profit organisation which has been providing counselling services in Somerset and Bristol and counselling training in Somerset since 1983.

The WCP Diploma is a training in Psychodynamic Counselling.

One of the core principles of Psychodynamic counselling is that early experience, from birth onwards, shapes our psychological development. Our resulting thoughts and desires, fears, anxieties and fantasies have a significant influence on the way we behave and our relationships as adults. Much of this material is unconscious and we are often unaware of it. By bringing into consciousness what is unconscious people are able to relinquish constraints and anxieties that have caused distressing symptoms and see something of themselves that was previously hidden to them.

Psychodynamic counselling is derived from the work of Freud, particularly in regard to the unconscious. The idea behind the formation and operation of the unconscious is that our psyche represses unpleasant or forbidden material – discomfort, traumas, unacceptable fantasies, etc – so that we do not consciously think of them. However, much repression is incomplete and the anxieties that the repressed ideas engender continue to operate, but their effect is displaced into seemingly unrelated behaviours or beliefs.

Most unconscious ideas will not come into consciousness directly. Instead, they tend to arise in response to a similarity between the here-and-now relationship with the counsellor and something from early times. For example, a client’s response to a counsellor taking a holiday break may invoke feelings from infancy or childhood towards the primary caregiver that could not be expressed at the time. The role of the psychodynamic counsellor is to offer responses and interpretations that enable the client to understand their behaviour and feelings in these terms.

In addition to a thorough grounding in psychodynamic theory and its development, the course offers practical and experiential components that will aid your development as a psychodynamic practitioner. These include personal therapy, clinical supervision and experiential group work.

The core philosophy that joins all these elements into a coherent programme is that working with and within a containing and boundaried framework will enable client and counsellor to encounter, understand and change in the here-and-now aspects of their early development that have previously been unconscious.

Our training is rigorous, externally accredited to the highest national standard. We value diversity and have a commitment to providing equality of opportunity.

Our Diploma Course is a professional counselling qualification, accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), and the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC).

All training staff and supervisors at WCP are trained counsellors or psychotherapists, accredited/registered by the BACP or registered with BPC or an equivalent professional organisation regulated by the Professional Standard Authority and registered with the National Voluntary Register for Counsellors and Psychotherapists.

Core Staff:

Head of Training - Penny Old

A list of teaching staff is available upon request.