Curriculum for the Bakkalaureat Programme

Learning Outcomes:
The principal objective of the course will be to enhance our consciousness of cultural differences in individuals that may be your future patients. Since these differences are rooted in different social systems, educational institutions, languages and beliefs, we have to become acquainted with them. I will often draw examples from my personal anthropological fieldwork and thereby give students a first-hand access to some other cultures.

Contents:
The subject of “social psychology” is the comparative study of how people in different societies of the world live together, and which ways and rules they have found to reduce conflict and live smoothly. Myself, I have carried out fieldwork in Africa, Brazil and the southern United States and will present research materials from my own work in those culture areas, on DVD and video, but also discuss materials from other cultures. (i) Social organization, e.g. matrilineal and patrilineal societies in Africa and what it means; also marital residence" virilocal or uxorilocal (i.e. the wife stays in the husband's village, or the husband stays in the wife's village, and what the consequences are). Political organization, e.g. kingship in Buganda, totemism etc. (ii) Educational systems in different societies responding to specific needs, e.g. initiation schools in Zambia and Malawi. Also: story-telling and riddling. (iii) Taboos, i.e. sentences transmitted by oral tradition about what must not be done (examples from Europe, Africa and elsewhere). (iv) Omina, i.e. sentences transmitted by oral tradition about what will happen to you if you encounter such as such thing, for example an owl on a pole in the night (examples from Europe, USA, and Africa). (v) Secret societies and their function, for example masked societies (nyau in Malawi; makisi in Angola). How people in different societies cope with individual and social problems. Example: the function of singing the blues in the southern United States; or treatments received by local medical practitioners in various societies. Trance states in the orixa religion in Salvador/Bahia, Brazil, etc.

Learning Outcomes:
Introduction to ‘relational medicine‘/‘relational treatment‘: psychosomatic thinking and attitude as an approach toward the complex situation of an ill person. (How talking professionally with the psychosomatic ill patient?) Sensitivity towards psychic aspects of (bodily) diseases connected to individual biography, stressful life events/trauma and socio-cultural background. Become aware of relation between the somatic and the affective system: ‘relational language’, ‘body-language’, ‘organ-language’ in present contact connected to personal individual experiences.

Contents:
The term ‘psychosomatics’ is used as a theory about development of illness and secondly means a certain attitude towards an ill person. Special topics: (i) What is defined today as psychosomatic symptoms is related to the complex context of the individual patient. (ii) Theoretical (historic and present) models of psychosomatics (concepts of conflict – patterns & somatization). (iii) The bio- psycho- socio- cultural concept of Thure von Uexküll. There will be given examples for practical psychosomatic work: psycho-oncology; psychic aspects of specific diseases (examples: ‘the holy seven‘, anorexia , depression); the roles and patterns of doctor’s(therapist’s)-patient relationship; how to do a bio-psycho-social anamnesis (focus on the individual biography and life events); some possible practical psychotherapeutic interventions with patients with somatisation; brief explanation of the functioning of the central nervous system – the basic knowledge to work with in traumatherapy; practical exercises experiencing the function of the interoceptive and exteroceptive nervous system (in order to understand and work with patients suffering from PTSD and anxiety disorder); case reports

Learning Outcomes:
Strengthen the responsible approach and critical questioning of bio-psycho-social illness and health models in the child- and youth psychiatry before the background of the scientific-historical and cultural-comparing perspective; Broaden the ability to connect the particular, the process-related, the time-bound, the cultural specific with the general (Toulmin, 1991, 284) and to be able to meet children and adolescents concerned with a professional multidimensional approach; widen the professional skill and the diagnostic view through an inter- and transcultural perspective on child-psychiatric classification systems

Contents:
Child and Youth Psychiatric models in a historical and culturally comparative context; Child and Youth Psychiatry in the time of National Socialism; actual concepts and theories of the genesis and treatment of psychological symptoms, disorders and diseases of children and adolescents in the Child- and Youth Psychiatry; basic principles and the function of modern child and youth psychiatric classification systems and the meaning of diagnostics in the biographic, historical, social, and transcultural context

Learning Outcomes:
This course provides the first aider with the knowledge and skills to carry out emergency first aid for life threatening injuries and illnesses, as well as to provide first aid care for injuries and illnesses in the home or in the workplace in specialty at the SFU Ambulance. The course is based on the first aid guidelines form the American heart association and European resuscitation council.

Contents:
The role of the first aider; contents of First Aid kits (avoid cross infection); recording of incidents and accidents; assessing the situation in an emergency; administer first aid to a casualty who; is unconscious (including seizures); requires cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR); is choking; is wounded or bleeding; is in shock; has minor conditions – to include: minor cuts, grazes and bruises, minor burns and scalds, small splinters; administer first aid to a casualty with; injuries to bones, muscles, joints including suspected spinal injury; sudden poisoning; burns and scalds; eye injuries; anaphylactic shock; recognise the presence of major illness and provide appropriate first aid including heart attack*, stroke, epilepsy, asthma & diabetes

Learning Outcomes:
The goal of the course is to prepare students for navigation through the existing research literature. Concrete research reports are studied and students are invited to co-create an actual research design for a given problem. They are also challenged to consider ethical issues of research within the field of psychotherapy. Students are able to locate and understand relevant scientific sources. They are able to articulate and define a research problem as well as recognize and select an appropriate research design. Students are able to detect and critically reflect on ethical issues connected to research in psychotherapy.

Contents:
The course builds on the Scientific research methods I (students are expected to be familiar with basic research toolbox) and is designed so, that students get more closely acquainted with research in psychotherapy. A more hands-on experience of research design and research execution is enabled by student collaborative work. Examples of research papers reporting on state-of-the-art research in psychotherapy are discussed. Papers are selected the way so most relevant conceptual and methodological modern approaches are covered. Students are encouraged to initiate a personal process of finding interesting and relevant research problems and then – via the process of collaborative work – are lead through the process of methodological consideration and research design. Ethical issues are emphasised.

Learning Outcomes:
The students understand the basics of data collection and random sampling, how to create, use and interpret tables and charts and perform basic calculations of descriptive statistics. More specific students learn to calculate and apply basic descriptive statistics such as the mean, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, skewness, and the coefficient of correlation

Contents:
The course gives an introduction in statistical measures of location and dispersion and overviews different kinds of correlations. In addition basics in psychological measurement (test theory) are treated. All examples used will focus psychotherapy research and applicability of the measures will be critically discussed.

Contents:
Notoriously, educational standards are falling, with a commensurate decline in logical and literary skills. And there is perhaps no field so manifestly afflicted by shoddy thinking and a dearth of scholarly rigour than that of psychoanalysis -- and, by extension, psychotherapy generally. Sins of omission and commission, including tendentious decontextualization and the invocation of doctrinal authority (e.g. 'As Freud stated, ...'), are all-too-commonly perpetrated in the exegeses of raw data in such a way as to preempt and preclude alternative apprehensions and skeptical appraisals; morphologic homologies (Gruenbaum's ‘thematic affinities’) are routinely seized upon and assembled as though these alone -- post hoc, ergo propter hoc! -- constitute hard evidence of causation; and, notwithstanding the very nature of the 'transference', the placebo-effect is most often discounted by clinicians in their appeal to therapeutic efficacy as proof of the psychological verisimilitude of their narrative constructions, and ultimately of the very legitimacy of their individual doctrinal persuasions. Moreover, we as consumers get to be told the good news, seldom the bad news. As a Google-search evinces, the instructor has long been a controversial figure in the field of Freud-studies. His radical secularism, his sceptical empiricism, his committed historicism, and his unusually erudite close reading of all the writings of Sigmund Freud -- the latter as often enough informed and clarified by follow-up in situ historical investigations -- have resulted in a body of work that Prof. John Forrester (@ University of Cambridge, UK) has appropriately characterized as 'field-transforming'. His conclusions, however, are still to this day summarily rejected (as often as not by dint of silence) by doctrinaire Freudians -- but for those that some among them choose to repackage and tender as products of their own intellectual labours. Just who is this liar who lies within each of us -- a demoniacal 'evil genius' maybe planted there by God (a la Descartes); a Freudian Unconscious (a la Freud); or we ourselves (a la Sartre)? And this Unconscious --does it actually exist (a la Freud), is it a mere façon de parler (a la Janet), or is there simply: No More Unconscıous (yours truly)? Do psychotherapists read minds; or is psychological reverse-engineering the true nature of their enterprise? These and many other such pressing issues will be discussed, and no doubt provocatively so, by the instructor, himself an unabashed skeptic, who solicits from his students not belief but intelligent discussion & debate, and calls only for a sovereign independence of mind as an antidote to all doctrinaire indoctrination. Psychological theories, all well & good -- but, please, not at the cost of ever more inflation. After all, in just what consists a currency?

Learning Outcomes:
Students gain basic knowledge in the interplay of medicine and psychotherapy from the viewpoint of law. They are enabled to detect legal problems, and students are informed on duties of the psychotherapeutic profession.

Contents:
Introduction to the basic concepts of jurisprudence; principles and structure of the legal order of the health system; overview of health professions and their professional regulation with special emphasis on the Psychotherapy Law; legal situation of patients/clients.

Learning Outcomes:
This course deepens the basic knowledge taught in the respective lecture, with emphasis on legal consequences of malpractice and liability case.

Learning Outcomes:
Profession-related discussion on psychotherapeutic ethical guidelines and deepened personal reflection of values in order to strengthen a responsible approach in psychotherapeutic work in case of ethical dilemma and also in order to respect the dignity and integrity of clients and to ensure one’s own mental hygiene; widen the professional perceptions through a scientific-historical and inter- and transcultural perspective on ethical issues in psychotherapy.

Contents:
Psychotherapeutic work is characterized by personal, social, cultural a. o. values, attitudes, objectives, approaches towards people, life from the perspective of clients as psychotherapists: (i) Introduction into ethics, terminology, related to the field of psychotherapy; (ii) personal reflection on values, attitudes, beliefs; further discussion in small groups and on specific issues in the large group; Focus on common and different points of view; (iii) discussion on psychotherapeutic ethical values on the basis of professional psychotherapeutic codes and other central psychotherapeutic ethical issues in the literature; (iv) deepen the personal reflections on behalf of concrete psychotherapeutic case-examples, embracing, historical, inter- and transcultural perspectives on ethical issues.

This course deepens the respective lecture.

Contents:
Aspects of aging and psychotherapy in old aged people based on biological, psychological and psychosocial investigations. Treatment of patients with specific diseases e.g. dementia, depression, anxiety, personality disorders and sexual dysfunctions.

Contents:
Coming soon

Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcomes:

Contents:
Coming soon

For the practical requirement according to the Austrian Psychotherapiegesetzt (psychotherapy law) students have to attend the practical training encompassing 480 hours total from B1-B4 including 20 hours observation at the international clinic of SFU. Students have the free choice to pass the practical training hours at the international clinic of SFU or at any other certified practicum establishments.

Contents:
In this seminar students have to reflect on the experiences made during the practicum (clinical placement). Students write reports on their activities and impressions of the institution. Group discussions of these experiences enhance the observation skills, i.e. skills of differentiation between outer influences and inner reactions. This is important for gaining competencies in the profession as a psychotherapist.