Major of Psychology

(Master's and Doctoral Program)

Training professionals active in a wide range of psychology-related fields

Guided by the educational principle of “researching the mind and supporting the person,” the Graduate Program in Psychology aims to foster highly skilled professionals capable of applying their knowledge of psychology in many different settings. Students in the master’s program are trained as specialized professionals who provide a range of supportive services in response to contemporary societal needs, while also gaining the skills to pursue a research career. To do so, they take a wide range of courses encompassing both psychology and clinical psychology as part of a curriculum that emphasizes experiments and practical training. The master’s program is divided into clinical psychology and psychology concentrations. The Clinical Psychology course trains professionals capable of working in a range of fields including healthcare, social welfare, education, the justice and criminal systems, and industry and labor through lecture courses on various psychological treatments such as client-centered therapy, psychoanalysis, group and community approaches to therapy, body-oriented psychotherapy, family therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as practical training within and outside of the school. The Psychology course gives students a solid grounding in the studies of cognitive, physiological, lifelong developmental, social, industrial and organizational, and educational psychology, as well as psychometrics, with the objective of training professionals who can respond to a range of contemporary social problems. The doctoral program aims to foster researchers in all fields of clinical psychology, psychology and education and child development, as well as educators capable of training practitioners of psychology-based support for individuals and communities. To achieve this, students receive guidance from faculty in relevant fields and attend special lecture courses intended to cultivate broadly educated, unbiased researchers and educators of highly specialized professionals.

Admission Policy

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Robust research and training at the Clinical Psychology Center

The Clinical Psychology Center at the Faculty of Psychology Institute for Psychological Research offers consulting services to community residents struggling with a variety of psychological issues. The Center’s facilities include a playroom, miniature garden room, activity room, and consultation rooms. In addition to community services, the Center serves as a clinical training facility for graduate students that is used for counseling and supervision. It also houses classrooms, laboratories, and computer rooms for graduate students, offering a centralized environment for research and learning.
High certification rates and secure career opportunities as a licensed or clinical psychologist
The clinical psychology course meets the curriculum requirements for national certification as a licensed psychologist as well as certification as a clinical psychologist by the Foundation of the Japanese Certification Board for Clinical Psychologists. In addition to a wide selection of lecture courses in psychotherapy and psychiatry, we offer many opportunities for developing the practical skills needed in clinical settings, including training in interviews and psychological assessments, case management and supervision at the on-campus Clinical Psychology Center, and clinical practicums and supervision at off-campus partner institutions. Our graduates have extremely high pass rates for qualification as clinical psychologists with 100% passing the examination for the former in 2017 and 2018, 93.3% passing in 2019, 90% passing in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and for qualification as licensed psychologists with 90% passing the first round of examinations (2017 graduates), 93.8% passing the second round (2018 graduates), and 100% passing the third round (2019 graduates), the fourth round (2020 graduates), and the fifth round (2021 graduates). Our graduates also enjoy highly secure career prospects, and are employed at general hospitals, psychology clinics, child welfare facilities, educational counseling centers, university student counseling centers, industrial facilities, and in civil service. We are proud that over half of our students find full-time employment by the time of graduation.

Turning experience into theory and proof

The Psychology Course aims to foster human resources who can explore the mind and support people as research of the fundamentals of psychology and as advanced practitioners. This program deals with empirical science that emphasizes the generation and verification of hypotheses. To investigate and demonstrate hypotheses with the aim of addressing various problems in daily life and society, students can learn everything from data collection through experiments, surveys, and interviews to advanced techniques for psychological data analysis, as appropriate to their research area of interest. The expertise they acquire as a result can be applied to predicting human behavior and developing new tools. In the 2023 academic year, we introduced an entrance examination system for working adults, allowing us to foster individuals aiming to become psychology specialists who can utilize their previous work experience.