Sonia Algueró: "The integrative approach allows us to better adapt to the needs of the patient"
Undoubtedly, the Psychology degree is one of the most interest generated today, and training as a psychologist can be a vital enriching experience. But many recent graduates lament that the race is impractical.
Some students attend four years of Bachelor's degree, almost two more years in the Master's degree in General Health Psychology, and do not get to put into practice everything they have learned. This becomes a serious problem when dealing with people and, on many occasions, their emotional conflicts.
Interview with Sonia Algueró, director of the Master in Integrative Psychotherapy
Luckily, some postgraduate studies allow not only training in theoretical aspects, but also provide the opportunity for their students to be able to practice as psychotherapists and thus gain confidence in clinical and psychotherapeutic practice. An example of this is the Master in Integrative Psychotherapy of the Mensalus Institute of Barcelona .
Today we will talk with Sonia Algueró, clinical psychologist and sanitary general psychologist, founder and technical director of the Mensalus Institute and director of the Master of Integrative Psychotherapy at the Mensalus Institute, to talk about this totally practical training, designed for those who wish to acquire the necessary functional skills to be able to carry out their professional work as a psychologist.
Jonathan García-Allen: The Mensalus Institute teaches the Master in Integrative Psychotherapy. I have read on your website that it is a training with a unique methodology whose purpose is to help students to practice as future psychotherapists. What differentiates your Master from similar ones?
Sonia Algueró: We carry out an assistance-type master's degree where students can apply the knowledge acquired in their academic career within a real context, either from the observation of live cases or live participation. This is the big difference.
In addition, week after week, you can draw on the theoretical knowledge you still need to carry out psychotherapy. The small groups and the exhaustive monitoring by the tutors guarantee a guided learning process at all times. The student is never alone, there is always a team behind.
There are many students who, when finishing their higher education, think that they are not prepared to practice their profession, do you think that this phenomenon is a real problem?
Totally. This is the main reason why they sign up for our Master. The training offers the possibility of exercising as a psychotherapist with real patients supervised and supervised at all times. The acquisition of skills resulting from the staging helps the student to overcome fears and overcome obstacles that may arise in the practice of professional practice.
There are different orientations in psychotherapeutic practice, but what advantages does the integrative positioning characteristic of the Master in Integrative Psychotherapy of the Mensalus Institute offer?
Working under an integrative approach facilitates the use of all the necessary techniques according to the demand, the diagnostic hypothesis and the clinical hypothesis. It allows us to take advantage of the wide range of resources that we currently have given the scientific advance of all psychological theories.
From the integrative approach and using an evaluation methodology of the therapeutic process, the student will have the opportunity to know how and when to apply the knowledge acquired in the approach that has been formed, as well as to expand their knowledge with tools of other approaches under the protection of common principles. In short, the integrative approach in psychotherapy allows better adaptation to the needs of the patient.
Do you think it is necessary for psychologists to experiment with their own psychotherapeutic style?
We consider that it is basic that the student knows and develops his own therapeutic style, this will make it easier to work more efficiently. At the same time, it will enable you to become more self-aware when interacting with patients and with different problems.
We work the personal and professional style of each student with depth. On the other hand, they also get used to seeing us work under different professional profiles in the training sessions, training that, remember, always takes place with live patients.
In the Master in Integrative Psychotherapy students have the opportunity to learn from other psychotherapists with the viewing of cases live through a unidirectional glass. In what sense does this help you?
As I said before, the fact of offering knowledge from real live cases (through the unidirectional mirror, a screen and a camera circuit) makes it easier, from the first day, for the student to get used to witnessing the psychotherapy they direct different professionals, besides observing, commenting and directing the psychotherapeutic intervention as it happens with the difficulties and characteristics of the professional reality.
Do you think that Psychology has all the recognition it should? What initiatives can be carried out so that reality changes?
Not at all. I would tell them to claim, through the collegiate body created to defend our profession (college of psychologists), the rights that take away our profession unlike other professions that have defended their rights and have not taken them away.
From your point of view, what would you say to those recent graduates in Psychology who want to practice as psychotherapists psychologists but do not feel prepared to put themselves in front of a patient?
I would say that in our master they will have the possibility to train and improve their psychotherapeutic skills as well as to overcome the universal fears evidenced in the scientific literature: fears to which every psychologist is exposed and idiosyncratic fears of each student.
They will also have the possibility of expanding their knowledge and, of course, the key element: increase the real practice of psychotherapeutic intervention techniques that will help them to expand their resources as psychotherapists.
