Abstract
This research aims to better understand the context within which fully qualified psychotherapists, with some experience of client work, made the decision not to continue with their careers after significant effort to complete the requirements of the psychotherapy training. It identifies, groups and analyses those reasons as experienced by a small cohort of qualified psychotherapists using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The results of this study can provide a better understanding of the support needed for newly graduated therapists that could inform current training programmes and/or entry criteria for the psychotherapy courses available nationally. The interviews and subsequent in-depth analysis of interviews with 3 non-practicing psychotherapists highlighted that qualified psychotherapists who successfully completed a psychotherapy training and client work were influenced by a combination of external and internal unconscious mechanisms when they decided to terminate their practice and those are set within the framework of Object Relations.
