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Chapter One – An introduction to the study - Page 14
clinical supervisors or from colleagues who had done the course in the past. Typically,
more applications than potential places would be received, but some people would be
offered a place and decline (usually having found another course more suited to their
needs). Hence it was unusual to have the maximum group size (of, say, 14), with most
groups consisting of 8 to 10 people. Occasionally, as noted elsewhere, students would
withdraw after one year, leaving second-year groups typically smaller that first-year
groups – in the case of the group under study, two people (David and Ursula, mentioned
in Chapter Four) had done that.
Selection of applicants for a place on the course depended on a half-hour interview with
two staff members. The aim of this was for staff to meet with each applicant, and to
explore with them in person their interest in the course, their previous training, their
current practice and supervisory arrangements, their history of personal therapy, their
capacity to learn in a group setting such as that created on the course, and their response
to a supervisory comment made in relation a clinical vignette invited from them.
Applicants were not told at the time whether they had been selected, with this being
decided by the staff following discussion after each interview. Applicants were told they
would hear within two or three days of the interview. If there was doubt or concern, the
staff would wait until the next day, or until the next chance they had to meet again to
explore this doubt or concern further, and were encouraged to elaborate any hunches or
discomfort that came to them, no matter how apparently irrational these might be.
The decision process followed a form of triage, namely ‘yes’, ‘not now’, and ‘no’. To
reject an applicant outright (‘no’) was rare, and would usually reflect doubt or concern
about their capacity to benefit from the training, even with additional time or
experience. ‘Not now’ would usually reflect the fact that an applicant had not yet had