Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (APP)

IRCP’s most advanced educational programme in adult psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (APP) represents the highest level of IRCP’s long-term education in adult psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The programme is designed for experienced mental health professionals who wish to deepen their theoretical knowledge, clinical thinking, and capacity to work psychoanalytically with complex patients.

Through advanced theoretical study, clinical seminars, regular supervision, and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy, participants develop their professional identity as psychoanalytic psychotherapists and strengthen their capacity to engage with demanding therapeutic situations.

Education within APP extends beyond the acquisition of theory and technique. It places particular emphasis on developing the capacity to think, observe, tolerate uncertainty, and make use of emotional experience within the therapeutic process.

Why This Programme?

At advanced stages of professional practice, therapists encounter patients whose difficulties cannot be understood through theory and technique alone. Work with complex personality organisations, developmental trauma, severe personality disturbance, and unconscious processes requires the capacity to think analytically within the therapeutic relationship.

APP enables participants to establish a deeper connection between psychoanalytic theory, clinical experience, supervision, and personal psychotherapy while developing the capacities required for advanced psychoanalytic work.

Programme Features

• Advanced education in adult psychoanalytic psychotherapy
• Grounding in the British Object Relations tradition and contemporary psychoanalysis
• In-depth study of Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and other major psychoanalytic thinkers
• Integration of theoretical learning, supervision, and clinical experience
• Focus on patients with complex personality organisations
• Exploration of psychoanalytic thinking across specialist areas
• Development of analytic thinking and professional identity

Educational Structure

• Advanced theoretical teaching
• Theory and Practice Seminars (TAPS)
• Supervision
• Clinical seminars
• Individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy

Key Areas of Study

• Advanced study of British Object Relations theory and contemporary psychoanalysis
• Systematic study of Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and other major theorists
• Advanced techniques in psychoanalytic psychotherapy
• Psychoanalytic assessment, formulation, and treatment planning
• Transference, countertransference, and the interpretive process
• Clinical seminars and case analysis
• Psychoanalytic couple therapy
• Psychoanalytic group psychotherapy
• Psychosomatic experience from a psychoanalytic perspective
• Eating disorders
• Developing the capacity to think clinically when working with complex patients and different personality organisations

Who Is This Programme For?

This programme is intended for psychotherapists and mental health professionals already pursuing a professional pathway in psychoanalytic psychotherapy who wish to develop their theoretical knowledge, clinical understanding, and professional identity at an advanced level.

Admission Requirements

• Completion of the Foundation Programme in Psychoanalysis or an equivalent programme approved by IRCP
• Successful completion of IRCP’s academic assessment and admission interview
• Individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy with an IRCP-approved therapist
• Commitment to regular participation in teaching, supervision, and clinically informed educational activities

Important: Individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and supervision form part of the programme’s educational requirements. The cost of individual psychotherapy is not included in the programme tuition and is arranged separately. Supervision for one patient is included within the educational programme; supervision costs for additional patients are the participant’s responsibility.

Academic Team

Scientific Leads

Dr Mohammad Sanati
Distinguished Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, United Kingdom
Chair, Iranian Branch of the World Association for Dynamic Psychiatry (WADP)

Dr Mahdieh Moin
Psychiatrist and former faculty member, Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society
Former Director of the Psychotherapy Fellowship Programme, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS)

Programme Coordinator

Dr Afsaneh Mohammadzadeh
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapy Fellow
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

This programme is an educational programme of the Iranian Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies (IRCP). Information presented on this website is for educational and programme-information purposes.