Upon successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

  • name the definition of clinical psychological interventions and their subject matter.
  • list various forms of clinical psychological interventions (e.g., counseling, psychotherapy, mediation, supervision) and apply their indications using case examples.  
  • list legal and ethical principles of clinical psychological interventions and apply them to case studies.
  • list and differentiate between central theoretical approaches and paradigms of clinical psychological interventions and their applications.
  • apply basic skills from clinical-psychological diagnostics and intervention and list specific fields of application and target groups.
Teaching content
  1. Introduction to clinical psychological intervention.
  2. Definition, subject matter, and goals of clinical psychological intervention.
  3. Legal and ethical foundations (professional and social law)
  4. Forms of clinical-psychological interventions and their indications
  5. General Conditions of Clinical Psychological Interventions in Germany
  1. Introduction to casuistry and case analysis  
  2. Medical history
  3. Behavioral analysis
  4. Psycho dynamic
  5. System and resource analysis
  6. Goal definition and treatment planning
  1. Basic theoretical concepts of clinical psychological interventions and their applications.
  2. Psychoanalytically based procedures
  3. Behavioral therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy based procedures.
  4. Systemically based procedures
  5. Humanistic based procedures
  6. Inter-school, general and integrative further developments
  7. Process models in different applications
  1. Basic skills of clinical-psychological diagnostics and interventions.
  2. Fundamentals of interviewing and relationship building.
  3. Basic skills (e.g., active listening, motivational interventions, paraphrasing, verbalizing, validating, reinforcing, resource activation, summarizing, feeding back, mirroring, marking, structuring, concretizing, confronting, exploring)
  4. Supervision and intervision
  1. Specific fields of application and target groups
  2. Multi-person settings (couples, families, work teams)
  3. Working in specific target groups (children and adolescents, older people, people with a migration background, LGBTQI)
  4. Internet-based and media-based interventions
  1. Development and assessment of clinical psychological interventions
Teaching and learning methods

Attendance study: Seminar-like lecture, interactive development of contents, exercises in the form of case studies, group work, role plays and casuistics, testing of clinical-psychological intervention methods

Self-study: Accompanying literature study, learning videos, online self-tests to check one’s own learning progress, learning tasks as individual or group tasks, exercises as part of media-supported self-study

Participation requirements

It is recommended to have successfully completed the following module:

  • Developmental psychology (B-PW 6.1)
  • Biological psychology (B-PW 5.3)
  • Application Subject Basic: Introduction Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy (B-PWAB 1)
Requirements for the award of credits (all performances and forms of examination incl. their weighting for the module grade)  

Students complete this module with an oral examination. The oral exam can also be conducted as a group exam as specified by the instructor.

Usability of the module

The application specialization Clinical Psychology is a compulsory elective module of the study program Psychology (B.Sc.). This specialization can also be used for the degree program in Business Psychology (B.Sc.).

This module is closely related to the modules Fundamentals of Test Theory and Psychological Diagnostics (B-PW 4.1), Diagnostic Procedures (B-PW 4.2), General Psychology I (B-PW 5.1) and II (B-PW 5.2), Biological Psychology (B-PW 5. 3), Developmental Psychology (B-PW 6.1), Personality and Differential Psychology (B-PW 6.2), Social Psychology (B-PW 6.3), and Application Subject Basic Introduction to Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy (B-PWAB 1) together.

Weight of the module grade for the final grade

5/169 ECTS- Points in the Psychology program (B.Sc.)