120 CPD Credits · 10 Modules · Live Online via Zoom

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ICPS COLLEGE · TEST VERSION — NOT FOR ENROLMENT

Important Information on Enrolment & Securing Your Place

• Course Status: Fully Accredited

• Course Cost: €645

• Payment Due at Booking: 50%

• Deposit at Booking: €322.50

• Schedule: 1 Class per Week (3 Hours)

Course Details

• Delivery: Live-Online (Lecturer-Led)

• Credits: 120 CPD Credits

• Format: Live-Online Lecturer-Led Modules via Zoom

• Duration: 1 Class per Week (3 Hours) Over 10 Weeks

• Online Live Attendance: 30 Hours

• Self-Directed Learning: 900 Hours

• Course Open To: Practitioners, Students & All Members of the Public with an Interest & Speciality Area of Practice

• Assessment: Class Attendance 10%; Skills Assessment 20%; Moodle Activity & Lecture Viewing 20%; Case Studies across Modules 5–10 40%.

• Award: Accredited Advanced Professional Diploma

Course Description

This Advanced Professional Diploma in Addiction Studies provides comprehensive, academically grounded and clinically informed training for practitioners who wish to deepen their understanding of addiction across neurobiological, psychological, behavioural and psychoanalytic perspectives. The programme is designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, social care practitioners, healthcare workers, educators and allied professionals who wish to develop specialist competence in working with addiction and its many presentations.

The course begins with the conceptual and historical foundations of addiction studies, including its etymology, key psychoanalytic terms such as the pleasure principle and jouissance, and the shift from moral models to contemporary biopsychosocial understanding. Learners then examine the neuroscience of addiction in depth, including the dopamine reward pathway, neuroplasticity, genetic and epigenetic vulnerability, and the psychodynamic and integrative perspectives that integrate neurobiology and unconscious meaning.

A central strength of the programme is its structured examination of psychological theories of addiction, spanning behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic and attachment-based frameworks, alongside a dedicated module on behavioural addictions such as gambling, gaming, sex and love dependency, and compulsive shopping or eating. The programme then moves into sustained psychoanalytic territory, exploring transference and the social bond in addiction work, toxicomania and the addictification of contemporary society, addiction as the search for a lost object, and the wounded, trauma-related roots of addictive formations from a Freudian perspective.

The programme devotes a full module to Jacques Lacan's theory of need, demand and desire. It concludes with integration, ethics and the clinic of addiction, drawing together the psychoanalytic threads of the whole programme into a coherent, reflective clinical orientation. Freudian concepts, including the pleasure principle, repression, repetition compulsion, mourning and melancholia, and working-through, and Lacanian concepts, including jouissance, the object a, the Other, and the ethics of desire, are integrated throughout as substantive theoretical content, not as brief asides.

Practical application is central throughout the course, with case discussion, breakout-room case studies, skills practice and reflective exercises woven into every module. Learners are encouraged to think carefully about pacing, professional boundaries, scope of competence, supervision, countertransference and their own responses when working closely with addiction and its underlying psychic structure.

By the end, learners should be able to understand addiction from neurobiological, psychological, behavioural and psychoanalytic perspectives, apply structured assessment and formulation skills, and integrate psychoanalytically informed, ethically grounded practice into their own professional context. The programme supports reflective, informed and clinically responsible practice while emphasising that specialist addiction treatment, high-risk presentations and complex psychiatric comorbidity should be undertaken only by appropriately qualified professionals through recognised specialist training and appropriate supervision.

This programme is open to practitioners, students and members of the public who wish to deepen their understanding of addiction studies. Practitioners already working in counselling, psychotherapy, healthcare, education, or social care will find that the course strengthens their existing clinical skill set. It provides a structured, psychoanalytically enriched framework for addiction-informed practice. Students who are building toward a career in counselling or psychotherapy will benefit from an advanced theoretical and practical foundation that complements their ongoing studies. Members of the public with a personal interest in this area of study and who are considering a future career in counselling and psychotherapy are equally welcome to enrol.

Course Highlights

• Comprehensive advanced training in addiction studies across neurobiological, psychological and psychoanalytic perspectives

• Detailed exploration of the etymology, history and conceptual foundations of addiction

• In-depth coverage of the neuroscience of addiction, including the dopamine reward pathway and neuroplasticity

• Structured examination of behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic and attachment-based psychological theories

• Dedicated module on behavioural addictions, including gambling, gaming, sex, love, shopping and food

• Sustained integration of Freudian concepts, including the pleasure principle, repetition and mourning

• Sustained integration of Lacanian concepts, including jouissance, the object a, need, demand and desire

• Applied focus on transference, countertransference and the social bond in addiction work

• Exploration of toxicomania and the addictification of contemporary consumer society

• Conceptualisation of addiction as the search for a lost object, loss and psychic void

• Deep exploration of trauma, defence and addictive formations from a Freudian perspective

• A dedicated module on Lacan's theory of need, demand and desire and its clinical implications

• Strong emphasis on ethics, boundaries, supervision and the practitioner's own countertransference

• Strong emphasis on skills practice, breakout-room case studies and reflective learning

• Final integration of the programme's psychoanalytic threads into a coherent clinical orientation

• Suitable for practitioners seeking to formalise existing addiction-related experience within an advanced academic framework

• Accessible to students building toward a career in counselling, psychotherapy, or allied helping professions

• Open to members of the public with a personal interest in addiction studies

• Flexible, live-online delivery designed to suit practitioners, students and members of the public, balancing work, study and personal commitments

• Rigorous, academically robust approach that values psychoanalytic depth alongside applied clinical skill

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this programme, learners will be able to:

1. Define addiction, toxicomania and behavioural addiction, and trace their conceptual and historical development.

2. Explain the neuroscience of addiction, including the dopamine reward pathway, neuroplasticity and genetic vulnerability.

3. Compare behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic and attachment-based theories of addiction and their clinical implications.

4. Recognise and work with major behavioural addictions, including gambling, gaming, sex, love, shopping and food.

5. Apply Freudian concepts, including the pleasure principle, repetition compulsion and mourning, to addiction presentations.

6. Apply Lacanian concepts, including jouissance, the object a, and need, demand and desire, to addiction presentations.

7. Establish and work with transference, countertransference and the social bond in addiction-focused clinical work.

8. Critically evaluate the addictification of contemporary consumer culture and the modern imperative to enjoy.

9. Conceptualise addiction as a search for a lost object and understand its structural relationship to loss and lack.

10. Understand addiction as a defensive formation arising from trauma, dissociation and failures of containment.

11. Distinguish need, demand and desire, and apply this framework to the addicted subject's relation to the Other.

12. Apply ethical principles specific to addiction work, including boundaries, the therapeutic frame and safeguarding.

13. Recognise vicarious trauma, countertransference strain and the importance of supervision in addiction practice.

14. Integrate neurobiological, psychological and psychoanalytic perspectives into a coherent clinical orientation.

15. Integrate psychoanalytically informed addiction studies into existing professional practice.

16. Build an advanced theoretical and clinical foundation for further study in counselling and psychotherapy.

17. Reflect on personal responses and assumptions about addiction within a safe, structured and supported learning environment.

Additional Information

This programme provides an advanced professional foundation in addiction studies, integrating neurobiological, psychological and psychoanalytic perspectives. It is not a full specialist training in addiction medicine, psychiatric treatment or any single addiction-treatment modality. It does not qualify participants to practise outside their existing scope of competence. Learners should apply the material within their existing professional role, training background and ethical responsibilities.

The course is particularly relevant for professionals who encounter addiction, compulsive behaviour or dual diagnosis in their work. Learners are encouraged to seek appropriate supervision, further specialist training and referral pathways when working with acute withdrawal, medical complications, safeguarding concerns, severe psychiatric comorbidity or presentations requiring specialist addiction or medical services.

The Freudian and Lacanian material included throughout the programme is presented as substantive theoretical content central to this course's advanced, psychoanalytically informed orientation to addiction. These concepts should never be used to impose interpretation prematurely or to replace evidence-informed, collaborative and client-centred care. Instead, they support listening carefully to speech, repetition, desire, and the symbolic or relational meanings that may shape the relationship, all held alongside humility, ethical restraint, and appropriate supervision.

Learners should understand that addiction work can raise difficult and sometimes distressing material, both clinically and personally, and that the client's safety, consent, pace and lived experience must remain central throughout. Compassionate, psychoanalytically informed practice can enrich assessment and support when held alongside evidence-informed practice and clear professional boundaries.

Teaching is delivered live online and includes lecturer-led input, case discussion, breakout-room case studies, skills practice and reflective exercises. Learners are expected to actively engage with the live sessions, Moodle LMS materials, self-directed reading, reflective tasks and assessment preparation. The programme supports students in developing not only academic knowledge but also professional judgement, ethical reasoning, self-awareness and the capacity to work confidently and reflectively with addiction.

The course may support continuing professional development for counsellors, psychotherapists, trainees, social care workers, healthcare professionals, educators, psychologists, supervisors, community workers and allied professionals. Students should consult the lecturer, course leader or academic registry office if they require clarification regarding accreditation, assessment, attendance, professional pathway requirements, suitability, scope of practice or progression.

This programme welcomes practitioners, students and members of the public alike. Practitioners already working in counselling, psychotherapy, healthcare, education or social care are encouraged to use the course to consolidate and extend their existing knowledge of addiction studies through advanced psychoanalytic perspectives. Students working toward a qualification in counselling or psychotherapy will find the course a rigorous foundation that complements their wider studies. Members of the public, including those with a personal interest in this area of study, are warmly encouraged to enrol.

The College recognises that learners come to this subject from diverse personal and professional backgrounds, and the course is designed to be rigorous and meaningful regardless of prior experience. Reflective exercises, case discussion and skills practice are structured to support learners at all levels, while maintaining the academic depth expected of an Advanced Professional Diploma for Level 8/9 CPD learners. Learners are encouraged to engage honestly and thoughtfully with the material, and to seek appropriate support, supervision or further training where relevant to their personal circumstances or professional development goals.

Course Curriculum — Ten Modules

1 | Introduction to Addiction Studies

• Conceptual foundations: etymology, key terms and psychoanalytic frames

• A-diction, diction and toxicomania: the linguistic and psychoanalytic roots of addiction

• The pleasure principle (Freud) and jouissance (Lacan) as regulatory principles

• The urgency, immediacy and demand that characterise addictive behaviour

• Key definitions and diagnostic characteristics from DSM-5-TR and ICD-11

• Substance and behavioural categories, with illustrative case examples

• Historical evolution of addiction, from moral failing to biopsychosocial understanding

• Addressing common myths and facts, and the biopsychosocial model

• Impact on individuals and families, including safeguarding considerations

• Skills practice in reframing case presentations through a trauma-informed lens

• Freudian lens: Addiction approached through the pleasure principle and its beyond: repetition compulsion, the economics of satisfaction and the substance as a means of managing unbearable tension, offered as a frame for reflective formulation rather than explanation.

• Lacanian lens: The addicted subject's relation to jouissance and to the signifier: how a drug may short-circuit the detour through speech and the Other, and why listening to the subject's own words remains central to the clinic.

2 | The Neuroscience of Addiction

• Addiction as brain disease: reward, stress and executive-control systems

• The dopamine reward pathway and substance-induced hijacking of natural reward

• Neuroplasticity, habit formation and the shift from goal-directed to habitual control

• Genetic vulnerability, epigenetics and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

• Prefrontal cortex changes, amygdala hyperactivity, withdrawal and cue-induced craving

• Psychodynamic and integrative perspectives: holding neuroscience and psychic conflict together

• Skills practice in applying neuroscience and self-medication frameworks to a case example

• Freudian lens: Freud's early neurological project and his economic model of drive and discharge as historical counterparts to reward neuroscience, inviting reflection on how bodily excitation and psychic representation meet in craving.

• Lacanian lens: The distinction between organism and speaking body: neuroscience describes reward circuitry, while a Lacanian reading asks how jouissance inscribes itself on a body already marked by language and the Other's desire.

3 | Psychological Theories of Addiction

• Behavioural psychology: classical conditioning, operant reinforcement and social learning

• Cognitive approaches: addictive thinking patterns and CBT-based relapse prevention

• Psychodynamic theories: unconscious conflict, the self-medication hypothesis and defence patterns

• Attachment and developmental psychology: insecure attachment as a vulnerability factor

• Personality disorders and dual diagnosis: prevalence and treatment complexities

• The therapeutic relationship: empathy, trust, boundaries and countertransference

• Professional assessment instruments: ASI, CAGE, AUDIT and DAST

• Skills practice in reframing cognitive distortions and mapping the behavioural habit loop

• Freudian lens: Psychodynamic accounts placed alongside cognitive and behavioural models: addiction as a defence against anxiety, a regression to oral satisfaction and a compromise formation that both expresses and conceals unconscious conflict.

• Lacanian lens: Theories of addiction read as discourses: the four discourses help practitioners notice whether a model positions the addicted person as an object of mastery, an object of knowledge or a subject who speaks.

4 | Behavioural Addictions

• Conceptual framework: behavioural addictions and shared neurobiological features

• Gambling disorder: diagnostic criteria, brain science and co-occurring presentations

• Gaming and internet addiction: classification, presentation and cultural context

• Sex, love and relationship dependency: clinical perspectives and diagnostic controversy

• Compulsive buying and food addiction: emotional regulation and shared mechanisms

• Treatment approaches: CBT, motivational interviewing,d group therapy and peer support

• The classification debate: clinical legitimacy versus the risk of over-pathologising

• Skills practice in foundational counselling skills for behavioural addiction presentations

• Freudian lens: Gambling, gaming and compulsive sexual or shopping behaviours considered through repetition compulsion and the death drive, where the pursuit of pleasure becomes a repeated return to loss, risk and self-punishment.

• Lacanian lens: Behavioural addictions as attempts to capture objet petit a in endlessly renewed objects, where the next bet, screen or purchase promises a completeness that the structure of desire can never deliver.

5 | Addiction, Transference & the Social Bond

• Freudian foundations of transference: displacement, anticipation and the stereotype plate

• Positive and negative transference, and the shift from resistance to therapeutic instrument

• Lacan on transference: the analyst as empty mirror and the subject supposed to know

• Countertransference in theory and in addiction practice specifically

• The difficulty of establishing transference when the substance offers a "perfect solution"

• Creating a demand for treatment, and moving the subject from demand to desire

• The analyst is the object cause of desire, and the restoration of the social bond through speech

• Skills practice in the analytic stance and countertransference awareness

• Freudian lens: Transference in addiction work: the substance as a rival love object, idealisation and disappointment directed at the counsellor, and countertransference responses such as rescuing, frustration or punitive superego attitudes.

• Lacanian lens: Addiction as a possible rupture of the social bond that discourse ordinarily sustains; the transference is approached as the place where the subject may re-enter speech and a renewed relation with the Other.

6 | Toxicomania: One Form of Modern Enslavement

• Defining toxicomania and distinguishing it from behavioural addiction

• The pleasure principle, jouissance and the social bond of shared human speech

• Need, demand, desire and symbolic castration as the precondition for desire

• Freud's cocaine studies: why the subject, not the substance, determines the effect

• Implications for the limits of substance-focused approaches to addiction

• The addictification of contemporary consumer society and the modern command to enjoy

• Guiding clinical principles: transference, speech, diagnosis and the role of abstinence

• Skills practice in privileging speech and listening for jouissance and the social bond

• Freudian lens: Toxicomania examined through Freud's remarks on intoxication as a powerful means of keeping suffering at bay, and the superego's paradoxical demands that can bind the subject ever more tightly to the substance.

• Lacanian lens: Toxicomania as a mode of jouissance that may bypass the phallic function and symbolic castration, raising questions about modern enslavement to consumer objects and the market's injunction to enjoy.

7 | Addiction: The Search for a Lost Object

• Freud on mourning and melancholia, and structural parallels with addiction

• The lost object in early development: absence, the transitional object and symbolisation

• Desire, absence and substitution: the addictive object as a stand-in for the missing Other

• Lacan's objet petit a and addiction's attempt to materialise the psychic void

• Symbolic versus Real satisfaction and its clinical implications

• The limits of recovery without subjective meaning and unmourned loss

• Skills practice in listening for unexpressed loss and the function of the addictive object

• Freudian lens: The lost object in Freud's theory of desire and in mourning and melancholia: addiction considered as an attempt to refind an original satisfaction, or to avoid the painful work of mourning altogether.

• Lacanian lens: Objet petit a understood as the cause of desire rather than its attainable goal; the substance can be formulated as a stand-in that masks lack instead of allowing the subject to symbolise it.

8 | Wounded Roots: Addiction & Trauma

• Freud's theory of trauma: the protective shield, the compulsion to repeat and defence

• Deep psychoanalytic framing: Ferenczi's confusion of tongues and Laplanche's enigmatic signifier

• Affect, transitional objects and repetition compulsion in addictive formations

• PTSD, complex PTSD, dissociation and splitting as structural responses to trauma

• Addiction as defence, compromise formation and an attempt at psychic repair

• Trauma therapy, transference and trauma-informed care in addiction work

• Formative assignment: 1,000-word essay on trauma, defence and addictive formation

• Skills practice in recognising defences, hearing repetition and offering containment

• Freudian lens: Trauma, repression and the return of the repressed: substance use as an attempt to bind overwhelming excitation, with repetition compulsion understood as the psyche revisiting what it could not originally master.

• Lacanian lens: Trauma approached as an encounter with the Real that resists symbolisation; substances may numb that encounter, while careful therapeutic speech allows fragments of it to be gradually brought into the Symbolic.

9 | Jacques Lacan: Need, Demand & Desire

• Core distinctions between need, demand and desire

• "Every demand is a demand for love": recognition and the gap that remains

• The nature of desire: unsatisfiable, structural and the motor force of a life

• Desire and the unconscious: the illusion of free choice and crystallised sentences

• The neurotic strategy of renouncing desire, and the aim of bringing desire into existence

• Addiction as a short-circuiting of desire, and the clinical task of reawakening it

• Skills practice in listening for demand, recognition and desire within a case account

• Freudian lens: Freud's distinction between instinctual need and the wish, together with his account of infantile helplessness, as the ground on which addiction's confusion of need and satisfaction can be thoughtfully explored.

• Lacanian lens: The gap between need, demand and desire, and how addiction may collapse desire back into a quasi-biological need; the clinical task is to reopen the question of what the subject desires.

10 | Integration, Ethics & the Clinic of Addiction

• Integrating the psychoanalytic threads of the programme: transference, loss, trauma, desire and the social bond

• From behaviour to structure: neurotic, psychotic and perverse relations to the substance

• The ethics of desire in the clinic of addiction: not ceding on one's desire, and the tragic sense of life

• Boundaries, the therapeutic frame and safeguarding in addiction practice

• Countertransference and the practitioner's own desire in addiction work

• Supervision, reflective practice and the wounded healer

• Sustainable, ethical practice and synthesis of the whole programme

• Formal Skills Assessment: live online fishbowl-format assessment evaluated by two examiners

• Freudian lens: Integrating Freudian concepts responsibly: the analytic attitude, the counsellor's own countertransference and limits, and the ethical recognition that psychodynamic formulation complements rather than replaces medical and multidisciplinary care.

• Lacanian lens: Lacan's ethics of psychoanalysis applied to addiction: not imposing the clinician's ideal of the good, but supporting the subject towards a less destructive relation to jouissance within safe, referral-aware practice.

Assessment & Course Completion

Your overall course mark is made up of four assessment components, totalling 100%.

• Class Attendance — 10%: A minimum of 80% attendance at live online classes is required. Attendance is recorded automatically through Zoom and reconciled by the Registry.

• Skills Assessment — 40%: A demonstrated skills assessment is observed by the lecturer. This component includes Moodle Activity & Lecture Viewing — Mandatory: engagement is evidenced through Moodle activity logs, including lecture recordings viewed in full, resources accessed and module tasks completed. A minimum pass of 80% in the skills assessment is required to receive the course award. Learners who do not reach 80% at the first attempt will be offered a resubmission opportunity.

• Weekly Case Study Pieces — 20%: One case is followed throughout Modules 1 to 10. A 400-word case study piece is submitted for Case Pieces 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. These six pieces together account for 20% of the overall mark.

• Final Case Study — 30%: A 2,000-word final case study that develops the same case, assessed against the published marking rubric on Moodle.

Total Percentage Achievable: 100%. The minimum attendance requirement and the mandatory Moodle activity and lecture viewing must also be met.

Credits & Learning Hours

• Live online teaching: 2.5 hours weekly for 10 weeks — 25 hours and 25 CPD credits

• Ten modules, each carrying 9.5 credits

• 240 hours of self-directed learning per module — 2,400 hours

• Total learning hours: 2,425

• Total award: 120 credits

Zoom Delivery

All live online classes are delivered via ICPS College's secure enterprise Zoom platform, providing a stable, professional and confidential environment for lecturer-led teaching, discussion and skills practice. Students are expected to engage fully with live sessions, including breakout room discussions and applied skills practice, to gain the maximum benefit from the programme.

Given the personal and reflective nature of some of the material covered in this course, students are encouraged to attend live sessions from a private, confidential space and to take breaks or seek support where needed. Students experiencing technical difficulties should contact the College promptly so that alternative arrangements can be made where possible.

Moodle LMS

Students are provided with access to the College's Moodle Learning Management System, where lecture notes, reading materials, module resources and assessment guidance are made available throughout the course. The Moodle LMS supports independent study and allows students to revisit key concepts, review recorded material where applicable, and prepare thoroughly for assessment.

Students are expected to engage regularly with the Moodle LMS as part of their self-directed learning hours. The platform is updated throughout the course to reflect the content covered in live sessions and to support consistent, structured academic progression.

Professional Accreditation & Important Information

Professional pathway and membership options may be available through the Irish Counselling, Psychotherapy & Allied Healthcare Professionals Association (ICPHAA) and recognised continuing-professional-development structures, subject to the current criteria of the relevant body. Students should confirm any specific pathway requirements with the lecturer, course leader or Registry Office.

By enrolling, students agree to comply with ICPS College policies, procedures and codes of conduct. Official course/cohort WhatsApp groups are College-moderated. Unofficial or unmoderated course/cohort groups should not be created for College-related communication without prior College knowledge and consent. These arrangements support student welfare, confidentiality, professional boundaries and protection from bullying, harassment, intimidation, exclusion and reputational harm.

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