The Psy.D. program represents Pacifica's commitment to grounding the principles of depth psychology in clinical practice. It is designed to produce exquisitely trained clinical psychologists who are skilled in a broad range of clinical work, including psychotherapy, assessment, supervision, and consultation, informed and enriched by psychodynamic perspectives. Pacifica trains students to achieve the powerful combination which results from combining core clinical skill sets and knowledge with primary, personal experience of the unconscious factors which motivate behavior.
The Psy.D. program includes four years of coursework designed to teach increasingly complex, sequential, competency-based and integrative content which makes up the building blocks of professional competence in clinical psychology. The first two years include emphasis on knowledge and practice skills in such core topics as psychopathology, diagnosis, psychological testing and assessment, ethics, and research, including depth psychology approaches in all these areas. The third and fourth years include increasing focus on advanced psychotherapy skills, with particular focus on Jungian, archetypal, psychoanalytic, and other psychodynamic perspectives.
Pacifica's Psy.D. program offers a uniquely integrative and depthful education which carefully preserves the importance of the role of unconscious life in clinical practice, while ensuring a solid education in the universally recognized attitudes, competencies, skill sets, and knowledge bases critical to a successful career as a clinical psychologist.
"I believe that our education in clinical psychology is extraordinary. Besides providing high quality foundational academic and clinical programs, we offer students a more complete picture of the human experience because of our depth psychology emphasis. Students travel here from all over the country to experience this special place which provides a setting that awakens the deeper dimensions of the human psyche in an intellectually stimulating academic environment."
—JAMES L. BRODERICK, PROGRAM CHAIR
