Update, October 2026: the course began in September 2026 and is now under way. For future courses, see hsky.fi.
We were pleased to announce the opening of enrollment for the DiaSek® Basic Course for Psychotherapists, organized in collaboration with Helsinki Summer University (HSKY).
The course runs from September 2026 to May 2027 and is designed for practicing psychotherapists who want to deepen their clinical listening skills.
What is DiaSek®?
DiaSek® is a method that enables psychotherapists to listen more precisely to clients' unique experiences. It is grounded in Mikael Leiman's semiotic object relations theory and Dialogical Sequence Analysis (DSA). The central concept is action — how human activity toward the environment and its objects creates psychological signs that emerge as traces of encounters.
The core insight of DSA is that all speech is addressed to someone and positions the speaker in relation to something. Learning to hear these positions transforms clinical work. Participants will learn to listen more deeply — not by categorizing or coding, but by developing an ear for the subtle movements in how people speak about their experience.
Course Structure (10 ECTS)
The course comprises four modules:
- Listening to and understanding client expression — Developing the basic capacity to hear what clients are actually saying through their speech
- Concepts as working tools; action theory — Learning to use DSA's theoretical framework as practical clinical tools
- Prerequisites and obstacles to client agency — Understanding what enables and what hinders the client's capacity to act
- Developing client self-understanding and agency through focused dialogue — Learning to facilitate therapeutic change through dialogical engagement
Teaching Format
The course combines several learning components:
- Theory webinars — Regular online sessions introducing and deepening theoretical concepts
- Independent study — Participants engage with supplementary literature, web texts, and articles on action theory and dialogical sequence analysis
- Case consultation — Supervised sessions working with clinical material
- Mentoring groups — Participants meet between webinars in small groups with a DiaSek-trained psychotherapist
The course is available in a hybrid format (Helsinki and online). Enrollment is through the Helsinki Summer University website at hsky.fi.