A Conversational Model of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

ANZAP provides advanced clinical training, supervision, and professional development to mental health and related professionals working within or outside of the publicly funded or subsidised mental health care system. The psychotherapy training program offered by ANZAP is specifically designed to help psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, general practitioners, psychiatrists and registrars and others to work more effectively with patients/clients and particularly those presenting with significant traumatic histories.

Established in 1987, ANZAP arose out of the psychotherapy program developed at Westmead Hospital in 1983. The program, which continues to run today, was founded on the clinical and theoretical ideas developed by Russell Meares and Robert Hobson from their experiences as clinicians at the Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital in the nineteen sixties and seventies. They worked with patients who at that time were considered untreatable and are now diagnosed with borderline personality. From these ideas emerged the therapeutic approach known as the Conversational Model.

ANZAP offers training in the Conversational Model over a supervised three-year period during which time the trainee will develop the clinical skills and personal awareness to qualify as a psychotherapist.