Experiences and Viewpoints of Psychotherapy Trainees

Extract

Psychotherapy is unpopular in Hong Kong for various reasons. There is a gross deficiency of psychiatrists in our population of five million, and individual psychotherapy, being time-consuming, is regarded as a luxurious treatment to be chosen as a last resort. Moreover, there seems to be some reluctance among psychiatrists to accept psychoanalytic theory as relevant to Chinese culture. Although experience in psychotherapy is regarded as essential in training, it has been difficult to learn psychotherapy in Hong Kong because good training programmes are impossible without the availability of qualified supervisors. In the past year, we have gone through a training programme in dynamic psychotherapy involving a series of seminars, individual supervisions and Balint groups. The programme was made possible by the joint efforts of the three senior lecturers in our Department, who all came from abroad and were experienced in teaching psychotherapy. We would like to report our experience of the training and give our viewpoints as trainees. It will be helpful to describe the training in stages which bear striking similarities to the actual psychotherapeutic processes of our patients.