Find out more about studying Professional Doctorate Analytical Psychology at University of Essex? We've gathered all the key details, entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Professional Doctorate
University of Essex
Part Time
Oct 2026
3 Year
This course allows you to further your own professional development, explore the area of greatest interest to you and make an original contribution to the development of your profession. Our professional doctorates constitute the academic and research component, building on what you have already studied and achieved in your professional training.The Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies is uniquely positioned to offer a professional doctorate of this kind. The department has a long and rich history of bringing clinicians and researchers from a wide range of orientations into fruitful collaboration and has a thriving research community. On this programme you will have access, alongside the specific course content, to all elements of the department’s provision, bringing you into contact with leading practitioners and researchers in your field as well as an exciting group of both staff and student researchers in related areas.This degree constitutes the academic and research top-up for graduates with a full training in Analytical Psychology.There are few comparable doctorates available. A few trainings are now doctoral programmes, or have doctorates available to trainees, but there are few routes available for those who trained in the past, and in many current trainings the doctoral top-up does not exist. This course enables those who have already completed a full relevant training to add the academic and research component to gain a doctorate and to contribute to the field.
This module provides knowledge and support in preparing a rigorous literature review to take its place in the final thesis. It will help you develop good literature search strategies and to be able to justify your choice of literature covered. You will be assisted in constructing a literature review which is not only a report on literature studied but an argument developing through your exploration of the relevant sources to which your project will contribute.
This module provides knowledge of different methodological approaches to research. It will provide you with a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including those most relevant to and informed by psychoanalytic thinking and practice. Supported by ongoing individual supervision and your own independent doctoral studies, you will be in a position by the end of the module to write a paper on the methodological issues involved in your project and to describe and justify your chosen research design.
This module provides support in producing a revised research proposal which will form the basis of the introduction chapter in the thesis.
This module aids you in managing and reflecting on the change in mind-set from being a clinician to becoming a researcher. This will provide material for the reflective element in the final thesis. You will attend a series of seminars and reflective groups in which topics such the efficacy and value of research for clinical practice, the distinction between clinical and research identity, and ethical research practice will be addressed and explored. This module provides support relating to the ethical aspects of conducting your chosen research project and the process of applying for and gaining ethical approval. Issues of consent and the role of the unconscious in research will be considered. There will be opportunities to learn about and to reflect on the emotional journey of the researcher through the project.
This is the research thesis in which a topic of choice is explored in depth generating new knowledge. It will draw on the learning from all the other modules and will be supported by the essays generated as assignments for those models, which will constitute the groundwork for several chapters of the thesis.
