Increasing undergraduate students' capacity to complete their degree programme successfully: Brief psychodynamic counselling intervention

Abstract

This article is drawn from a larger study exploring the relationship between undergraduate student counselling and successful degree completion. The article explores the interaction between academic goals and maturational drives for late adolescent (18-25) final-year undergraduates. The high levels of psychological distress recorded by a sample of students, as a result of the above interaction, is discussed, as is the effect that this distress has on their academic performance. Vignettes from case material of these students are presented which illustrate their experience. The effectiveness of a brief psychodynamic counselling intervention with this sample of students is demonstrated. Counselling intervention based on psychodynamic principles (Malan 1979) is shown to reduce dangerously high levels of psychological distress by addressing underlying conflicts, thus removing blocks to students' successful degree completion.

Key Words:

• Undergraduate
• learning
• late-adolescent
• maturation
• psychological distress
• psychodynamic