Psychology internships: from university to the field
Read this article published on the Cercle Psy website.
From theory to practice, from teacher-researchers to referent psychologists, from university clinical cases to real-life patients, psychology internships confront students with the reality of their future profession. How many hours of internship are students expected to complete? What difficulties might they encounter? Are internships enough to make good psychologists?
The vast majority of students will agree: the first stage of a psychology internship is the search for the internship itself (1). For if the job market for psychologists is particularly saturated, so too is the internship market. This is a very concrete initiation to the subsequent search for the precious sesame: employment. It’s only after numerous applications, networking and even referrals that a psychology student lands an internship. The internship. And there’s no question of choosing one by default. The internship must be in line with the student’s career plan, chosen specialization and relevant legislation. It’s not easy to reconcile university and professional life. « The trainee’s greatest difficulty is certainly finding an internship. And even then, once you’ve found it, it’s not easy! The student may be supervised by his or her supervisor, or left to his or her own devices, as happens in some institutions, » explains Anne-Charlotte Olczyk, President of the ADEpsy (Association des étudiants de psychologie) at Paris-Descartes University.
What is a good internship in the eyes of the law?
500. This is the total number of internship hours a psychology student must complete to qualify for the precious title of psychologist. Generally speaking, these hours are spread over the last two years of the curriculum: 200 in Master 1 and 300 in Master 2. According to the decree of May 19, 2006, following on from the decree of March 22, 1990, any professional internship in psychology must meet four main criteria to be recognized as such.
First criterion: the student must be supervised by a psychologist. In itself, this seems logical. But in reality, this requirement can make finding an internship more complex. All psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, educators and other therapists with the suffix -logue (sexologist, graphologist…) dealing with psychology are excluded.
Second criterion: the practice of the psychologist supervising the trainee must be over three years.
Third condition: the internship must be placed under the joint responsibility of the psychologist and an internship supervisor, a teacher-researcher in the program. This pairing provides an invaluable link between the student’s practical and theoretical training.
Fourth and last criterion: at the end of the internship, the apprentice psychologist must write a report on his or her professional experience and present it orally to his or her supervisors.
Once the criteria have been duly met and the internship secured, the three parties – student, host organization and training site – sign the internship agreement. This is a mainly administrative stage, designed to insure the trainee. Like a contract, it binds our three protagonists in a singular adventure far removed from the theoretical world of university libraries and lecture halls…
In the field
The internship has the weighty responsibility of bringing the apprentice psychologist face to face with the field. « The psychologist trainee is caught in a double bind: obtaining a diploma and training for a profession. The challenge of the internship is to acquire knowledge ‘about’ the clinic and also knowledge ‘of’ the clinic », explains Olivier Halimi, psychologist at a child and adolescent medical-psychological center, and expert in the consensus conference on child psychological examination. The internship has multiple functions: it enables the trainee to better define the psychologist’s place in an institution, to become aware of the difficulties inherent in his or her practice, to discover all the related functions of the profession (such as analyzing institutional conflicts or chairing meetings), as well as all the missions that do not fall within the scope of the profession. Above all, the internship orchestrates the first encounter, direct or indirect, between the student and the public welcomed into the structure, i.e. children, teenagers, adults or even the elderly. And putting theory into practice is no mean feat.
Variable training quality
Psychology internships are vast and varied. They range from hospitals and other clinics, EHPAD, CMP, BAPU, ITEP (2), to associations and foundations where care is involved. But which are the most formative? I don’t think there’s any better place to do an internship, » confides Anne-Charlotte Olczyk . . It all depends on the quality of the supervision and the place given to the trainee by the psychologist ». « You get out of it what you put into it , » adds Olivier Halimi. Whatever the case, CMPs (Centres Médico-Psychologiques) remain the most popular places for students. But what do they actually do there? Olivier Halimi answers: « Trainees can participate in the general running of the CMP, attend consultations provided by doctors and psychologists, observe assessments carried out by psychologists, speech therapists or psychomotor therapists, co-facilitate therapeutic groups, take part in team meetings, research and training seminars ». A range of missions that varies considerably from one CMP to another, despite a common value: » Trainees do not attend psychoanalytic psychotherapy sessions. Their presence, like that of any other third party, would alter the framework and have complicated effects on transference. « says Olivier Halimi.
Unfortunately, not all places are so instructive. « There are far too many places where referents don’t have the time to train trainees, to the point where many psychologists leave the faculty with no idea of the psychological examination, for example! Too often, quantity is favored over the quality of the students trained, » laments Claire Meljac, Doctor of Psychology at the Child and Adolescent Psychology and Psychopathology Unit at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, and psychologist member of the DEEP-Clisson association in Paris. » At UPPEA (3) de Sainte-Anne, trainee training has been part of the local tradition for over 100 years! It’s a vocation « she adds.
While some psychology internships prepare future psychologists for the reality of their work and arm them with a good dose of practical experience, others provide insufficient training, to the point of letting young, sometimes inexperienced, psychologists invade the offices of our cities. Whose fault is this? Not sufficiently scrupulous universities? Referring psychologists lacking in supervision? Or the trainees themselves, who don’t get involved enough? A question that never fails to spark lively discussion within the community. Until the training of psychologists is rethought.
(1) In view of the complexity of the situation, this article only deals with the professional internships of so-called clinical psychologists.
(2) Residential establishments for dependent elderly people, medical-psychological centers, university psychological aid offices, educational, therapeutic and psychological institutes.
(3) Child and adolescent psychopathology unit.
Between 2011, the Fédération Nationale des Étudiants en Psychologie carried out a nationwide survey on the issue of internships in psychology involving 1,419 students aged 18 to 55, with an average age of 24.45, spread across 38 training locations. 49% of placements were in the public sector and 21% in the private sector. 21% of students had done both. The number of placements per student also varied considerably. 26% of students had only one placement, 22% two, 18% three, and 23% more than three. It should be noted that students from Parisian universities had more internships than those from the provinces. As far as the search for internships is concerned, 2% did not search at all, 9% spent less than 5 hours, 20% between 5 and 10 hours, and 64% more than 10 hours. Finally, with regard to remuneration, the survey shows that 82% of internships were unpaid, 76% in the public sector and 24% in the private sector.
The title of the paragraph may make you smile. When did compensation become a constraint? And yet, it is. The difficulty of finding an internship has increased since the entry into force of article L. 612-11 of the July 28, 2011 law for the development of work-study programs and the securing of career paths. Now, the host company is obliged to pay the trainee a bonus for more than two months. It’s a poisoned chalice that some trainees could do without. Many structures are forced to close their doors to trainees for lack of financial resources. This inevitably reduces the number of internship places on the market. In the past, the subterfuges were well tried and tested: structures split the duration of their students’ internships by signing several agreements in succession. However, with the precise aim of limiting such abuses, this article L.612-11 bypasses these stratagems and imposes a bonus when the duration of an internship « within the same company exceeds two consecutive (or non-consecutive) months during the same school or university year. » This need for gratification arose a few years ago in certain private sectors, commercial or otherwise, which made trainees work like real employees. In psychology, however, things are very different. In the hospital civil service, for example, the referent psychologists have a teaching role and can only use their trainees at the very end of their training, when they are ready. They are the ones who should be remunerated for all this supervisory work! « exclaims Claire Meljac. It should be noted that this law only applies to the state civil service and the private sector. On the other hand, no decree has yet been issued to define the conditions of employment for local civil servants and hospital workers. But until when? A worrying point. If this legislation were to become law, the end of internships in hospitals and CMPs would undoubtedly be immediate.
FENEPSY (2012). Contribution on internships for psychology students: current situation, findings and proposals for improving conditions of access to internships. Report available online at www.psychologues-psychologie.net
Sylvain BOUYER (2005). The university and the training of the clinical psychologist. In La psychologie clinique et la profession de psychologue: (dé)qualification et (dé)formation? Collective work edited by Patrick Ange Raoult. Paris : L’Harmattan.