Stage Three: Advanced Clinical Training
TA Psychotherapy in the Wider Field and Advanced Clinical Specialisation
Introduction
This is where everything comes together. Stage Three represents the culmination of formal TA training, designed for those ready to complete their journey towards becoming fully qualified psychotherapists. This final year focuses on stepping into the role of a mental health professional and discovering your unique identity as a practitioner.
Over this intensive year, you will develop the sophisticated clinical skills and deep therapeutic understanding needed to facilitate profound change in people's lives. The programme covers working with complex presentations, navigating challenging therapeutic relationships, and holding space for the most vulnerable aspects of human experience. Upon completion, you will have finished your formal TA training at academic Level 7 and can choose your preferred professional pathway.
Two excellent qualification pathways:
Completion of Stage Three provides the foundation for two distinct routes into professional practice:
- The Level 7 Advanced Diploma in Adult Psychotherapy offers a direct pathway to UKCP registration, establishing you as a fully qualified psychotherapist.
- Alternatively, you may pursue the prestigious CTA examination to become a Certified Transactional Analyst – an internationally recognised qualification that opens doors to practice, training, and supervision opportunities worldwide.
For full details, please see our qualification framework page
What does Stage 3 cover?
Over eleven weekends, the course covers subjects such as:
The carefully curated eleven-weekend programme explores the art and science of advanced therapeutic practice:
- Understanding the broader context - You will learn to navigate the UK mental health landscape with confidence, understanding how diagnostic frameworks inform (but don't limit) your therapeutic approach whilst maintaining TA's humanistic perspective.
- Child ego state deconfusion - The programme covers sophisticated techniques that help clients address their deepest childhood wounds, teaching you safe and effective approaches to working with vulnerable early experiences and developmental trauma.
- Present-moment clinical work - You will develop your capacity for intersubjective presence, learning to use the 'here and now' therapeutic relationship as a powerful vehicle for transformation and recovery.
- Trauma-informed practice - The curriculum explores how intergenerational patterns and epigenetic influences shape clients' experiences, whilst you develop skills to help people rebuild their capacity for safety and connection.
- Complex presentations - Training includes working with challenging defensive structures including Schizoid, Borderline and Narcissistic presentations, helping you understand the adaptive function of these patterns whilst supporting healthy change.
- Relationship recovery work - You will learn specialised approaches for supporting clients recovering from pathological relationships, codependency, and attachment difficulties – increasingly common presentations in contemporary practice.
- Working with the unconscious - The programme covers how dreams, metaphors, and symbolic communication offer windows into clients' inner worlds, teaching you to work skilfully with these deeper layers of experience.
- Professional development - You will reflect on your emerging identity as a TA psychotherapist, explore different career paths, and develop the business and professional skills needed to sustain fulfilling practice.
Your formal assessments include two thoughtfully designed 2,500-word essays that allow you to explore topics of genuine interest. You will also create and deliver a presentation reflecting on your journey towards becoming a psychotherapist – often a deeply meaningful experience that helps consolidate your professional identity.
What outcomes can I expect?
By the end of Stage Three, you will have undergone profound personal and professional transformation beyond simply completing an academic programme. You will possess the clinical skills, theoretical knowledge, and self-awareness needed to hold space for others' recovery journeys whilst maintaining your own wellbeing and professional boundaries.
Whether you choose the Level 7 Advanced Diploma in Adult Psychotherapy for immediate UKCP registration, or decide to pursue the international recognition that comes with CTA qualification, you will be equipped with the advanced competencies needed for confident, effective practice.
Stage Three represents the final step in developing as a skilled TA psychotherapist, prepared to make a meaningful contribution to the field of mental health.
Why attend?
Anyone who has met criteria for a final year of TA training and who wants to become a UKCP registered Psychotherapist and Certified Transactional Analyst. This would also include those who qualified as TA counsellors some time ago, and who now wish to resume their studies and move towards qualification as a TA psychotherapist.
Learn more about our core Psychotherapy & Counselling training
Now Taking Applications for Sep 2026 Start
Length: 11 weekends over one academic year
Times: Sat 9:30 to 17:00 & Sun 9:30 to 16:00
Mode: Face-to-Face
Dates for this course are:
- 19 & 20 Sep 2026
- 10 & 11 Oct
- 21 & 22 Nov
- 5 & 6 Dec
- 9 & 10 Jan 2027
- 6 & 7 Feb
- 6 & 7 Mar
- 10 & 11 Apr
- 15 & 16 May
- 12 & 13 Jun
- 10 & 11 Jul
Cost: £3,250 (inclusive of VAT)
Instalment payment plans available
More Information?
Let us know if you have any questions
Meet the tutor
Patrick Brook
Patrick Brook TSTA, CTA (Psychotherapy), MA, BA (Hons) is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and supervisor. He is one of the founding directors and the Academic Director of Connexus Institute. Alongside his teaching, he runs a private psychotherapy and supervision practice in Brighton and Hove. Before training as a psychotherapist, Patrick worked for many years in higher education as a university lecturer and academic manager, teaching in the UK and abroad. He has written widely on curriculum design and learner-centred education and remains interested in how ideas translate meaningfully into practice. Patrick enjoys creating warm, engaging, and lively learning spaces where people can explore and develop their own professional and personal identities.