Post-Master's Fellowship — Pre-Licensed Therapist | LMFT / LPCC / LICSW Track

Lorenz Clinic of Family Psychology — Minneapolis–St. Paul Metropolitan Area

Full-Time | Salaried | W-2 | Benefits-Eligible | In-Person

Applications for Lorenz Clinic's 2026 Post-Master's Fellowship are now open. This is a nationally recognized, full-time, paid psychotherapy training position for pre-licensed mental health clinicians pursuing LICSW, LMFT, or LPCC licensure in Minnesota. Each year, a small cohort of fellows — selected from over a thousand applicants nationwide — joins us to train in relational, systemic, and developmentally informed psychotherapy. About half of our fellows relocate from across the country to participate; the rest come from leading graduate programs in the region.

Lorenz Clinic was the first in Minnesota to offer an organized, competency-based post-master's fellowship. The program has been recognized as among the most rigorous and formative pre-licensure training placements available to clinicians in this region, and we consider it our most significant contribution to the profession.

A cover letter is required. Applications submitted without a cover letter will not be considered.

About the Program

Most pre-licensed clinicians leave their graduate programs well-prepared and largely on their own — assembled a supervision arrangement here, a caseload there, hoping the hours add up in the right categories before the money runs out. The pre-licensure period in US healthcare asks a great deal of new clinicians while providing remarkably little structure for what that work actually stirs up. The worst-case scenario is a role where it's all about throughput — where the first thing that goes out the window is your learning, and where two years pass and you've accumulated hours but haven't really been formed.

This fellowship was built because we think the pre-licensure period deserves better than that.

The fellowship is a two-year, full-time training placement designed for clinicians who want the pre-licensure period to be genuinely developmental — not merely a grind toward supervised hours. It is not a high-volume billing role. Caseload, supervision, and curriculum are all structured around the fellow's developmental stage and learning goals rather than productivity targets.

The fellowship follows a cohort model. Fellows are drawn from the fields of counseling, marriage and family therapy, social work, and psychology, and the interprofessional composition of the group is intentional. The cohort is one of the most consistently formative aspects of the program — fellows describe it as intellectually serious, collegially rich, and demanding in the best sense.

The program is rigorous. The first year is the most challenging, and the fellows who succeed tend to be those who engage the program's structures actively rather than enduring the experience privately. Clinical work at this level — carrying an active caseload, developing clinical judgment under supervision, sitting with people in genuine distress — is genuinely demanding. This fellowship provides more structure for that work than the pre-licensure period typically offers. Fellows who bring their real cases to consultation, use the supervisory relationship as an active collaboration rather than a passive service, and show up in their training groups when it is uncomfortable tend to develop rapidly and report the experience as transformative.

What This Fellowship Is Building Toward

We have a specific clinical formation goal — and we are specific about it by design. The fellowship is not oriented toward producing competent generalists. It is oriented toward producing psychotherapists: clinicians who work with a second-order theory of change, who use the therapeutic relationship itself as a vehicle of transformation, and who can hold clients in genuine depth.

That formation unfolds across seven developmental domains. By the time a fellow completes this program, they are developing:

• The capacity to stay curious about what is happening inside a client — and inside themselves — even when the relational field becomes activated, distressing, or uncertain.
• The ability to notice and work with ruptures in the therapeutic alliance — not avoid them — and to use the repair itself as a vehicle of change.
• Access to their own internal experience during session, and the skill to hold it as clinical information rather than noise to be managed or a feeling to be enacted.
• A genuine theory of why — the capacity to move past diagnosis to a case formulation that explains what keeps producing the problem, grounded in the client's relational and developmental history.
• The developmental narrative as a living structure — understanding a client's history not as background context but as a pattern that is active in the room, right now, with this clinician.
• The ability to hold a client through regression — to stay present when the work gets harder before it gets easier, without reflexive rescue, referral, or restructuring.
• A formulation-first clinical mind — the habit of moving from data through diagnosis through problem formulation through case conceptualization to treatment, rather than from diagnosis directly to modality.

These are not competencies you need to arrive with. They are what the fellowship is building. What you need to arrive with is the orientation — the genuine curiosity about why, the willingness to be uncertain, the interest in what happens between people rather than only what happens inside them.

If that description fits how you already tend to think, you are likely the kind of clinician this program is designed for.

Training Format

The fellowship's curriculum addresses all 16 APA Competency Benchmark domains. Core training activities include:

Supervision — 8 hours/month

• 4 hours/month with a doctorally prepared psychologist
• 4 hours/month with a professional supervisor (psychologist or master's-level licensed clinician, per licensure track)

Supervision at Lorenz is treated as a distinct professional discipline, not an extension of clinical seniority. Fellows who approach the supervisory relationship as active collaborators — identifying what they need, naming what they are observing, and shaping the experience alongside their supervisor — consistently get the most from it.

Monthly PMF Seminar — 8 hours: A full-day, in-person learning event for the PMF cohort. Each session integrates didactic content, experiential activities, a guest practitioner-scholar, and small-group discussion. The day is protected — fellows are not expected to carry a full clinical schedule during seminar week.

Weekly Didactic Seminar — 1 hour: A topical survey seminar shared with the clinic's doctoral psychology interns. Topics include ethics, family systems, attachment, trauma, adult psychopathology, object relations, multicultural practice, neuroscience and psychotherapy, suicide risk assessment, and more. Presenters are doctorally prepared faculty clinicians.

Monthly Grand Rounds — 1 hour: An internal case presentation or invited speaker event open to all clinical staff. CE-eligible. Facilitated by a doctorally prepared psychologist.

Monthly Case Consultation — 4 hours: Specialist-led, consultee-focused, and non-evaluative. Structured around clinical formulation rather than advice-giving. Fellows bring the cases they are genuinely uncertain about.

As an active training clinic, most Lorenz clinicians earn approximately 100 hours per year of board-approved continuing education simply by showing up to work.

Clinical Role

Post-master's fellows provide psychotherapeutic services to a variety of clients under direct supervision. A typical fellow carries approximately 12–18 active clients, built gradually during the first months of the fellowship. Three program tracks are available:

• Outpatient psychotherapy — individual, couples, family, and group therapy
• Intensive outpatient group psychotherapy — structured group treatment across diagnostic presentations

Track assignment is based on the fellow's stated learning goals, prior preparation, and program need. The clinic's strong referral base allows for meaningful input on client age range and presenting concerns.

After the Fellowship

Historically, approximately 88% of second-year fellows who seek staff positions at Lorenz following program completion find them here. Staff employment is not automatic — fellows must apply and be selected — but the fellowship functions as a genuine pipeline into the clinic's clinical and supervisory ranks. Many of the clinic's current supervisors and clinical leaders are former PMF alumni. Fellows who wish to continue their professional development within the Lorenz system have access to a formation ladder that extends from supervised practice through supervision, clinical management, training leadership, and advanced clinical stewardship. The program has produced clinicians who have gone on to hold some of the highest levels of clinical and supervisory credential available in the field.

Alumni who leave the clinic have gone on to independent and group private practice, community mental health, policy leadership, professional association leadership, and doctoral programs. What distinguishes them, consistently, is the quality of their clinical thinking — particularly their capacity to formulate cases systemically and work with relational and interpersonal process.

Lorenz Clinic has established an endowed scholarship at the University of St. Thomas Graduate School of Professional Psychology in recognition of that program's alignment with the clinical values and epistemological orientation that animate our training.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary: $51,000–$90,000/year, based on qualifications, caseload, and program track. Pay-for-performance compensation is available at the fellow's election; however, the fellowship is designed to prioritize learning depth over volume, and fellows whose primary goal is income maximization will find a better fit elsewhere. This is a W-2, salaried role with a steady, predictable paycheck.

Benefits include

• Student loan repayment program
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life insurance and short- and long-term disability insurance
• 401(k) with employer matching
• Healthcare Savings Account (HSA)
• Paid time off, paid holidays, and Paid Burnout Time (a structured protected leave benefit separate from standard PTO)
• Paid service/volunteer time
• Flexible scheduling; hybrid options available
• Licensing exam preparation support
• Professional development assistance
• Employee assistance program

Requirements

The most successful candidates demonstrate a track record of sequential, scaffolded clinical learning aimed at a career as a psychotherapist. We look for clinicians who are curious about what they do not yet know, open to feedback that requires growth, and oriented toward the profession as a vocation rather than a credential.

Minimum qualifications

• Master's degree in psychology, clinical counseling, marriage and family therapy, social work, or closely related field from a regionally accredited program (doctoral candidates should consider our Postdoctoral Fellowship or Clinical Extern programs)
• Successful completion of a clinically focused master's-level practicum or internship where individual psychotherapy — including diagnosis, treatment planning, and ongoing therapeutic work — was the primary activity
• LICSW-track applicants specifically: a social work degree alone is not sufficient. This is a psychotherapy training fellowship. Placements focused primarily on case management, care coordination, or generalist social work services do not meet this requirement regardless of quality
• Declared licensure track (LICSW, LMFT, or LPCC in Minnesota); social work track applicants must hold a current, non-provisional LGSW before start date
• Completed master's-level practicum totaling at least 9-12 months of clinic-based formation where outpatient psychotherapy was the primary focus, prior to start date; placements that were primarily remote or telehealth will not be considered