Training and Services

University Certificate in Person Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy (CU in PCPE)
 

Contextualization

Following the split of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven) and the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in the 1970s, a post-master's training programme in PCPE was continued at both universities. From 1987 onwards, following the death of Prof. R. Volcher, the French-speaking training was taken over by the Training School of the Association Francophone de Psychothérapie Centrée sur la Personne et Expérientielle (AFPC asbl, https://www.afpc.be/). In 2016, the Belgian legislative framework regulating mental health care ("De Block" law of 18 May 2016) restricted the offer of training in psychotherapy within colleges and universities. As a result, psychologists and physicians no longer had curricula that allowed them to train in person-centred and experiential psychotherapy, even though it is a validated and scientifically based approach (see meta-analyses and literature reviews, Elliott, Greenberg, & Lietaer, 2004; Elliott, Watson, Greenberg, Timulak, & Freire, 2013; Zech, 2008), practised and taught worldwide.

In the French-speaking world, the Person Centred Approach is widely known in the world of teaching and training but is currently still neglected in clinical and health psychology programmes, fields dominated by the psychiatric, psychoanalytical, systemic or behavioural-cognitive-emotional paradigms. There was a strong need for training in CSLP. In 2018, the creation of the CU in CSLP at UCLouvain/PSP re-established the full university training in CSLP that has been going on at the KULeuven and that exists in many countries in the non-French speaking world (e.g., UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, Japan, Russia, at master and/or post-master levels) The humanistic foundations of the CSLP correspond particularly well to the values promoted by UCLouvain, which has thus become the only French-speaking university in Europe offering this type of continuing education.

Description

The course consists of a specialisation and deepening of the training in psychotherapy of 105 ECTS spread over 3 years of training at a post-master level (see https://uclouvain.be/fr/etudier/iufc/formation-continue-pcpe.html). The CU aims to train exclusively psychologists and psychiatrists (according to the legal accreditation criteria in Belgium) in CBPP for various target client/patient groups (adults, children, couples, groups). It includes theoretical and clinical teaching (seminars by experts and by therapists in training, readings) as well as practical experiments in psychotherapeutic relationships (debriefed role plays, experiential meeting groups, e-learning site helpingskills), psychotherapy practice, individual or group clinical supervision and in training groups, personal therapy, intermediate work and an end-of-training paper. Its components will allow for a thorough articulation between the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the psychotherapists in training. The CU aims at the acquisition of knowledge and skills enabling the practice of psychotherapy in an autonomous, ethical, responsible and interdisciplinary manner with clients/patients suffering from various problems, including those defined in the international psychodiagnostic classifications. It aims above all and very explicitly, thanks to an offer of empirically validated active teaching methods, at the development of therapeutic skills involving the development of the psychotherapist's person. The face-to-face modules are given over 8 weekends per year, thus offering the potential to welcome international therapists.

In collaboration with Prof. Benoît Galand (PSP/IPSY) and Prof. Donatienne Desmette (ESPO-OPES/IPSY), a project supported by PSP and IPSY through the SSH filter committee will enable the renovation and installation of premises for research and training in helping and psychotherapeutic relational skills. In particular, the funding will enable the installation and commissioning of a training and experimentation room equipped with the latest digital audio and video recording and classroom teaching technology in the Michotte Building (lab -2) in Louvain-la-Neuve. Work is scheduled to take place between 2018 and 2019.

The project directly involves psychologists involved in therapeutic relationships, teachers and psychosocial risk prevention advisers at work. The aim is to

(1) bring together and enable exchanges between teacher-trainer-researchers who are interested in the conditions for effectiveness and ways of learning helping relationship skills, by encouraging the conceptualisation and implementation of research with common objectives on the study of learning processes for helping relationship skills,

(2) to continue to develop effective training schemes in different areas involving interpersonal skills, and

(3) to train students who can practise and improve their helping skills within the laboratory.

The research that will be carried out will make use of the helping skills training designed by the PCLab, including the use of the helpingskills self-learning site, and will examine the effects of the structuring of training and support for autonomy in the acquisition and long-term maintenance of helping relationship skills, particularly empathic skills. 

https://ucline.uclouvain.be/course/index.php?categoryid=75

Three Pedagogical Development Funds (FDP) interconnected with each other were obtained in collaboration with other professors and partners. The first aimed at creating videos of interactions between practitioner-client/patient (2009-2011), the second at creating a self-training website (2012), and the third at promoting the website (2016). Since then, the site has been renovated and transferred to UCLine with free access (funding from PCLab and PSP Faculty, 2020). The new migration to Open Moodle is in progress (2025).

The first FDP (2009-2011) aimed at developing and implementing training modules on verbal and non-verbal communication within the clinician-patient relationship at various stages of the helping process, intended for psychology students (€2,500 in collaboration with Professors Nady Van Broeck and Lesley Verhofstadt). With the help of a doctoral student, Marine Jaeken, it enabled the scripting and production of videos of practitioner-patient/client interactions, which serve as a tool for illustrating and learning helping skills that can be integrated in various ways into student training. It is widely recognized that such skills between caregiver and patient/client are linked to better health, better treatment adherence, and greater satisfaction for both the caregiver and the patient/client (e.g., Kelly, 2007; Hill, 2009). Numerous scientific articles highlight the importance of integrating training aimed at developing helping and communication skills into the student curriculum and provide concrete information on the content of such training as well as how to teach and evaluate its effects (Richard, Ruch & Trevithick, 2005). Consequently, many universities, including in Belgium, notably in Antwerp (Peeraer, 2007), Ghent (Deveugele et al., 2005), and Leuven (Van Broeck, 2010), have introduced communication skills development modules into the student curriculum. This has also been implemented at UCLouvain.

The second FDP funded in 2012 by the Reserve of the Audio-Visual Center (CAV) of UCLouvain aimed, based on the work done during FDP1, at creating a self-learning site for helping skills (e-learning). (€23,000 in co-promotion with Professor Moïra Mikolajczak and Marine Jaeken (assistant); external partners: Professors Nady Van Broeck and Lesley Verhofstadt). The UCLouvain "helping skills" site, www.uclouvain.be/helpingskills, was created to facilitate the autonomous training of students needing to develop relational and communication skills for their future profession in the field of helping others. It is structured to acquire 12 helping skills in increasing order of complexity, starting with minimal encouragement and ending with the expression of the practitioner's frankness. In self-learning, the learner first receives theoretical information about the skill and can then watch a video illustrating how this skill is applied by a practitioner towards a client. The illustration is done either in a rather correct manner or in a less adequate manner (2 videos). The learner is asked to evaluate this. Then, they can proceed to a more precise decoding of each intervention performed and each response from the client, and their empathy is solicited by asking them to express what they would feel in the place of the practitioner or the client. After proceeding in the same way with the counter-example, the learner can then test their knowledge through a multiple-choice questionnaire and an open-ended questionnaire. Then, they can continue with each of the following skills. The site also includes an application tab allowing the learner to test the acquisition of the 12 skills by responding to clients expressing themselves for a few seconds facing the camera. All responses can be recorded and printed to be possibly worked on in class or afterwards. The Video tab allows the teacher to present and work on the videos either from the studied skills or from the various planned helping situations, such as a situation of school dropout, hiring, or bereavement. The use of the site is free. Just contact Emmanuelle Zech to obtain the contract and the usage key. 

The third FDP submitted to envelope No. 3 (promotion) obtained in 2016 (€3,000) aimed at promoting the self-learning site for helping skills https://youtu.be/kpJaUPShR7k, which is currently used by 300 third-year psychology and speech therapy students (LPSP1308: Helping Interview) for acquiring the 7 basic skills, 125 master's students for the 5 advanced skills (LPSYS2733: Psychotherapeutic Relationships in Critical Situations), student-therapists in training at CU in PCPE, and in several different trainings coordinated by other teachers (e.g., Benoît Galand's team - Chloé Tolmatcheff and Virgine Hospel - training of school dropout support counselors (outside UCLouvain); Institut Cardijn-Haute Ecole in Louvain en Hainaut by Professor Hanot in his interview course and in the Faculty of Medicine at ULg by Professor Gabrielle Scantamburlo in her "Medical Psychology" course). The objective of the support is to promote the existence of the site to UCLouvain trainers-teachers, but also to other partner universities or higher education institutions so that they can express their interest (1) in using the site or (2) in developing adaptations (adding situations or skills). The targeted partners are teachers who, in reference to the learning objectives of their programs and descriptions of Teaching Units, train in these relational helping skills. For example, professionals who have to make bad news announcements or manage the emotions and difficulties of their clients (e.g., dentists, doctors, physiotherapists, pharmacists, AGRE teachers, public health masters, prevention advisors in workplace well-being). This work was carried out with the help of Nathalie Kruyts from Louvain Learning Lab and CAV.
 

A fourth funding (2020-2021 by PCLab and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences) enabled the migration of the Helping Skills site to an H5P-compatible format on UCLine. It is used by approximately 600 students each year. A final migration is planned for 2025 to allow the dissemination and free access of the training site internationally, with self-registration. The course will be in "Free self-registered access" and with a Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-SA on Open Moodle. The gracious help of Louvain Learning Lab was provided for this.

Other innovative pedagogical developments

In connection with the learning outcomes framework of the Master's in Psychological Sciences and the Bachelor's in Psychological Sciences and Education, general orientation and speech therapy orientation (http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/psp/documents/CF_48.B.referentiel_acquis.pdf), it seems particularly essential to me that students, especially those aiming for clinical practice, can integrate communication skills, rigorous action, deontological and ethical conduct, and evaluation and enhancement of their professionalism and knowledge during their university studies. My personal option is that this can and should be achieved by offering students the opportunity to do so during courses and not only during their supervised internship practice by individuals outside the Faculty.

With members of the PCLab, we have conducted scientific research with second-year bachelor's, master's, and post-master's students to evaluate the effectiveness of three pedagogical methods for acquiring these clinical and relational skills:

(1) Role-playing exercises conducted at home by small groups of 3 to 5 students and debriefed in larger groups (series of 16 to 20 students) (see Brison, Van Broeck, & Zech, in revision; Zech, Brison & Van Broeck, 2012, July),

(2) The establishment of non-directive experiential encounter groups (see Brison, Zech, Jaeken, Priels, Van Broeck, Verhofstadt, & Mikolajczak, 2015), and

(3) Structured training in helping skills, ranging from the acquisition of 7 basic skills (e.g., minimal encouragement, asking a question, paraphrasing content, reflecting feelings) to 5 advanced skills (e.g., advanced accurate empathy, confrontation, frankness) (e.g., Jaeken, Zech, Van Broeck, Verhofstadt, & Mikolajczak, 2014; Jacken, Zech, Brison, Verhofstadt, Van Broeck, & Mikolajczak, submitted), which includes videos created as part of an FDP and led to the establishment of an e-learning site for helping skills, http://sites.uclouvain.be/helpingskills.

These empirical validations have fully justified the integration of these methods into several courses in the UCLouvain student curriculum:

In the second year of the bachelor's program, the introductory course to clinical psychology (LPSP1201) includes a part on person-centered and experiential psychotherapy (PCPE),

In the third year, the Helping Interview course (LPSP1308) for psychology and speech therapy students is dedicated to learning basic helping skills and attitudes;

In the master's program, the course Psychotherapeutic Relationships in Critical Situations (LPSYS2733) trains students in therapeutic attitudes and situations that can challenge their own person and the interventions they perform (e.g., bereavement situations, suicidal processes, violence), and the Adult Clinical Psychology Seminar (LPSYS2743), a final year course conducted in a flipped classroom format where students integrate the best scientific knowledge and their reflective practice (from supervised internships) into themes they have had little opportunity to address during their academic journey.

In post-master/continuing education, see the CU PCPE tab.

As a direct extension of their scientific activities, Prof. Jochem Willemsen and Prof. Emmanuelle Zech have decided to open psychological consultations specialising in their respective areas of expertise in psychoanalytic and person-centred psychotherapy 
Consultations spécialisées psychanalytiques et centrées sur la personne | ipsy
 
Members of the CPS PPCP: Hubert de Condé, Niccolò Polipo, Jochem Willemsen and Emmanuelle Zech
The services offered by the CPS PPCP are as follows:

Person-centred and experiential therapy consultations
Consultations in psychoanalytic therapy and psychoanalysis
Supervision in clinical psychology and psychotherapy
Training and support for trainers
Conferences
Press consultations
Support for research teams