About
Since our founding in 1996, the GW Professional Psychology Program has produced hundreds of licensed psychologists who serve patients around the world. In the program’s own Center Clinic, graduate students train under the guidance of licensed professionals to offer psychotherapy and assessment services to the local community.
Our rigorous curriculum and training focus primarily on a psychodynamic perspective, tailored to three tracks: Adult, Assessment or Child and Adolescent. Our diverse faculty are seasoned clinicians, scholars and researchers who specialize in family therapy, group therapy, short-term psychodynamic therapies, neuropsychology, LGBTQ+ experiences, diversity, community and more. Our alumni bring their experience to leading clinics and organizations across the Washington, D.C., region and around the world.
Connect With Our Community
Accreditation
The GW Professional Psychology Program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association. For information about accreditation please contact:
APA Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation
750 First St. NE
Washington, DC 20002-4242
Phone: 202-336-5979
Email: [email protected]
Our Approach
Mission
The mission of the Professional Psychology Program is to graduate practitioner-scholar professional psychologists who are exceptionally skilled as local clinical scientists in using a psychodynamic framework for the assessment and treatment of psychopathology. Our graduates know the clinical research methods necessary for new discoveries and base their professional practice in ongoing critical consumption of relevant research.
Philosophy
Our philosophy centers on a developmental view of the personality, both in its normal and abnormal aspects. A developmental view holds that no mental event can be fully explained without reference to its origins and transformations. The personality is never a "given”; it is always in process, ebbing and flowing in a dynamic relationship with the history of and progression in a person's thoughts, feelings, fantasies and internal representations of the external environment that constitute the totality of the person's mental life.
Values
- Openness
- Curiosity
- Diversity
- Tolerance
- Beneficence
- Humility
- Methodological ability
- Professional ethics in the discovery and equitable provision of effective clinical services
"I chose GW to pursue my degree for a number of reasons. I was first drawn by the program itself and was later sold when I attended an open house and met the faculty — they were very warm and inviting. It just felt right."
Aaron Banas
MPsy ’17, PsyD ’19