- Core theory and professional concepts relating to freud and the discovery of the unconscious
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to freud and the discovery of the unconscious
- Freudian lens: Students trace Freud's path from hypnosis to free association, examining how resistance, repression and the symptom revealed a dynamic unconscious, and situating this discovery within its scientific and cultural context.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan's reading of Freud emphasises the unconscious as the discourse of the Other; students explore how jokes, slips and forgetting show the unconscious speaking through gaps in conscious intention.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
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Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis
A live-online specialist programme in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
Advanced Professional Diploma
Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis
A live-online specialist programme in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
At a Glance
Course Details
€645Course Fee
€322.50Deposit
25 hrsLive Zoom Teaching
2,400 hrsSelf-Directed Learning
Overview
Course Description
The Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis is a specialist live-online programme designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, students and practitioners seeking advanced depth-psychology knowledge. It develops a structured and professionally bounded understanding of psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application. The programme combines conceptual teaching, clinical reflection, applied skills, case discussion and ethical decision-making so that learners can connect theory with real-world therapeutic and helping contexts.
Teaching begins by establishing the principal concepts and language used in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application. Learners examine how biological, psychological, relational, social and cultural influences shape presentation and recovery. The course then moves progressively into assessment, formulation, communication and intervention, with careful attention to what falls within the learner’s role and when specialist referral, multidisciplinary consultation or medical input is required.
A psychodynamic strand runs throughout the programme. Freudian concepts such as unconscious conflict, defence, repetition, transference and countertransference are used to deepen formulation, while Lacanian ideas concerning language, desire, the symbolic order and the subject’s relationship to the Other are introduced where they illuminate the course theme. These perspectives are integrated alongside contemporary evidence-informed approaches rather than presented as stand-alone doctrine.
Practical application is central. Learners participate in structured skills practice, case formulation, reflective exercises and scenario work designed to strengthen professional judgement. The programme emphasises relational safety, informed consent, scope of competence, cultural humility, safeguarding awareness, appropriate boundaries and the use of supervision. Learners are encouraged to notice their own emotional responses, assumptions and countertransference so that self-awareness becomes part of safe practice.
The live-online format supports direct lecturer engagement and peer discussion while Moodle provides structured resources for independent learning, revision and assessment preparation. The wider learning hours are used for reading, reflective practice, skills rehearsal and engagement with supplementary academic material. The overall design therefore combines live teaching with disciplined self-directed study rather than treating online delivery as passive distance learning.
By completion, learners should be able to discuss psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application with greater conceptual clarity, formulate relevant presentations using an integrated framework, communicate safely and respectfully, and apply course-specific skills within appropriate professional boundaries. The qualification is intended to strengthen continuing professional development and reflective practice; it does not replace statutory, medical, diagnostic or specialist training where those functions are legally or professionally restricted.
Why Choose This Course
Course Highlights
- Comprehensive specialist training in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
- Live-online lecturer-led delivery with real-time discussion and applied learning.
- Course-specific assessment, formulation and intervention skills.
- Integration of contemporary evidence-informed approaches with reflective practice.
- Freudian concepts including unconscious conflict, defence, repetition and transference.
- Lacanian perspectives on language, desire, the symbolic order and the Other where relevant.
- Strong emphasis on ethics, scope of competence, safeguarding and professional boundaries.
- Applied case discussion, scenario work and structured skills practice.
- Moodle-supported self-directed reading, revision and assessment preparation.
- Attention to attachment, development, trauma and relational processes where relevant.
- Focus on supervision, practitioner self-awareness and countertransference.
- Final integration of learning into safe, reflective and professionally appropriate practice.
What You Will Achieve
Learning Outcomes
- Explain key theories, language and professional concepts relevant to psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
- Analyse presentations using integrated biological, psychological, relational and social perspectives.
- Apply structured assessment and formulation principles within the limits of the learner’s role.
- Use clear, respectful and non-stigmatising professional communication.
- Recognise indicators requiring referral, safeguarding action, medical review or multidisciplinary input.
- Integrate appropriate evidence-informed interventions with relational and reflective practice.
- Use Freudian concepts to consider unconscious conflict, defence, repetition and transference.
- Use selected Lacanian concepts to deepen understanding of language, desire and subjectivity where appropriate.
- Reflect on countertransference, assumptions and the practitioner’s use of self.
- Maintain ethical boundaries, confidentiality, informed consent and scope of competence.
- Use supervision and reflective practice to support safe and sustainable professional work.
- Integrate course learning into an ethically bounded plan for continuing professional development.
Good to Know
Additional Information
This programme provides a broad professional foundation in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application. It should be applied within each learner’s existing role, competence, training background and ethical responsibilities. Where a presentation involves acute risk, safeguarding, complex medical questions, severe dissociation, statutory intervention or specialist assessment, learners are expected to follow appropriate referral and escalation pathways rather than practise beyond competence.
Live sessions are lecturer-led and may include demonstrations, reflective work, case discussion, skills rehearsal and breakout-room activities. Students are expected to participate actively and to maintain confidentiality when discussing practice material. Any case material brought to class should be sufficiently anonymised. The College may provide recordings of appropriate teaching segments for revision, while routine breakout rooms are not normally recorded.
Students are expected to engage consistently with Moodle, directed reading and assessment preparation. Professional learning in counselling and psychotherapy can evoke personal material; learners should use supervision, personal therapy or other appropriate supports where relevant. ICPS College also expects respectful communication, dignity, inclusivity, a non-judgemental attitude and adherence to College policies, procedures and codes of conduct throughout the programme.
Completion of the Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis does not in itself confer a protected professional title or authority to diagnose, prescribe, provide statutory assessment or undertake specialist interventions outside the learner’s existing competence. Students seeking clarification about accreditation, attendance, assessment, progression or professional scope should contact the Registry Office at sheila@icps.ie.
Programme Structure
Course Curriculum — Ten Modules
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to drives, conflict & psychic structure
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to drives, conflict & psychic structure
- Freudian lens: Freud's structural model of id, ego and superego, and his later dualism of life and death drives, provide frameworks for reflecting on psychic conflict and the compromises through which the ego mediates competing demands.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan reframes the drive as a montage circling the objet petit a and introduces jouissance, a painful excess of satisfaction, inviting students to reflect on why people may hold on to suffering.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to psychosexual development & early experience
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to psychosexual development & early experience
- Freudian lens: Freud's oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages and the Oedipus complex are examined as historical theories of how early experience shapes desire and identification, read critically in light of contemporary knowledge.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan reinterprets the Oedipus complex through the paternal metaphor and symbolic castration, presenting development as the child's entry into language and law rather than a strictly biological sequence.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to dreams, fantasy, symptoms & symbolic meaning
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to dreams, fantasy, symptoms & symbolic meaning
- Freudian lens: Freud's account of the dream as the royal road to the unconscious and the symptom as a substitute satisfaction helps students explore how disguised meaning emerges through association, displacement and condensation.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan describes the symptom as a message addressed to the Other and later as a mode of jouissance, while fantasy supports desire; students consider how these ideas shape listening to dreams and symptoms.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to ego, defence mechanisms & repetition
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to ego, defence mechanisms & repetition
- Freudian lens: Freud's later ego psychology, developed further by Anna Freud, frames defences such as repression, denial, isolation and undoing as unconscious strategies against anxiety, which may also entrench repetitive patterns.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan critiques ego psychology, viewing the ego as an Imaginary construction built on misrecognition; students reflect on how strengthening the ego differs from enabling the subject to question their own repetitions.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to object relations, attachment & internal worlds
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to object relations, attachment & internal worlds
- Freudian lens: Freud's papers on narcissism and mourning anticipate later object relations theory, showing how lost or loved objects are taken into the ego and continue to influence relationships and self-regard.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan's distinction between the small other of Imaginary identification and the big Other of language offers a critical lens on internal worlds, contrasting object relations with a structural theory of the subject.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to transference, countertransference & working through
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to transference, countertransference & working through
- Freudian lens: Freud's papers on technique describe remembering, repeating and working through, showing how transference allows past conflicts to be lived again in the present relationship and gradually understood rather than simply acted out.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan situates transference in the Symbolic and cautions against Imaginary dyadic relating; students reflect on the analyst's desire, the place of the objet petit a in transference and the ethics of not exploiting it.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to lacan: imaginary, symbolic & real
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to lacan: imaginary, symbolic & real
- Freudian lens: Students consider how Lacan's three registers re-read Freud's concepts, linking the Imaginary to narcissism and identification, the Symbolic to the Oedipal law, and the Real to trauma and the beyond of the pleasure principle.
- Lacanian lens: The module explores the mirror stage, the symbolic order and the Real as interlocking registers, and the later Borromean knot and sinthome as ways of thinking about how a subject holds together.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to lacan: desire, language, lack & the other
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to lacan: desire, language, lack & the other
- Freudian lens: Freud's account of the lost object of satisfaction and the wish that drives the dream provides the ground for Lacan's theory, helping students connect classical concepts of wish and loss with desire and lack.
- Lacanian lens: Students explore desire as metonymy, the gap between need, demand and desire, and the divided subject constituted by the signifier, reflecting on how lack sustains rather than blocks the subject's desire.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to clinical formulation, ethics, endings & integration
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to clinical formulation, ethics, endings & integration
- Freudian lens: A Freudian formulation integrates conflict, defence, transference and repetition, and Freud's reflections on termination inform careful planning of endings, recognising the reactivation of loss and the limits of what treatment can achieve.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan's ethics of desire, the traversal of fantasy and identification with the sinthome are considered as theoretical horizons for endings, held alongside professional codes, informed consent and responsible clinical practice.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
Assessment Breakdown
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
Live Online Attendance & Self-Directed Learning
Students are required to attend 25 hours of live online lecturer-led Zoom sessions. The normal attendance requirement is 80%, meaning students may normally miss only two classes except where approved extenuating circumstances apply. The wider independent-learning component includes extended reading, revision, applied reflection, skills practice, lecture notes, Moodle resources and supplementary academic materials.
Live Delivery
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.
Learning Platform
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.
Advanced Professional Diploma
Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis
A live-online specialist programme in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
At a Glance
Course Details
€645Course Fee
€322.50Deposit
25 hrsLive Zoom Teaching
2,400 hrsSelf-Directed Learning
Overview
Course Description
The Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis is a specialist live-online programme designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, students and practitioners seeking advanced depth-psychology knowledge. It develops a structured and professionally bounded understanding of psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application. The programme combines conceptual teaching, clinical reflection, applied skills, case discussion and ethical decision-making so that learners can connect theory with real-world therapeutic and helping contexts.
Teaching begins by establishing the principal concepts and language used in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application. Learners examine how biological, psychological, relational, social and cultural influences shape presentation and recovery. The course then moves progressively into assessment, formulation, communication and intervention, with careful attention to what falls within the learner’s role and when specialist referral, multidisciplinary consultation or medical input is required.
A psychodynamic strand runs throughout the programme. Freudian concepts such as unconscious conflict, defence, repetition, transference and countertransference are used to deepen formulation, while Lacanian ideas concerning language, desire, the symbolic order and the subject’s relationship to the Other are introduced where they illuminate the course theme. These perspectives are integrated alongside contemporary evidence-informed approaches rather than presented as stand-alone doctrine.
Practical application is central. Learners participate in structured skills practice, case formulation, reflective exercises and scenario work designed to strengthen professional judgement. The programme emphasises relational safety, informed consent, scope of competence, cultural humility, safeguarding awareness, appropriate boundaries and the use of supervision. Learners are encouraged to notice their own emotional responses, assumptions and countertransference so that self-awareness becomes part of safe practice.
The live-online format supports direct lecturer engagement and peer discussion while Moodle provides structured resources for independent learning, revision and assessment preparation. The wider learning hours are used for reading, reflective practice, skills rehearsal and engagement with supplementary academic material. The overall design therefore combines live teaching with disciplined self-directed study rather than treating online delivery as passive distance learning.
By completion, learners should be able to discuss psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application with greater conceptual clarity, formulate relevant presentations using an integrated framework, communicate safely and respectfully, and apply course-specific skills within appropriate professional boundaries. The qualification is intended to strengthen continuing professional development and reflective practice; it does not replace statutory, medical, diagnostic or specialist training where those functions are legally or professionally restricted.
Why Choose This Course
Course Highlights
- Comprehensive specialist training in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
- Live-online lecturer-led delivery with real-time discussion and applied learning.
- Course-specific assessment, formulation and intervention skills.
- Integration of contemporary evidence-informed approaches with reflective practice.
- Freudian concepts including unconscious conflict, defence, repetition and transference.
- Lacanian perspectives on language, desire, the symbolic order and the Other where relevant.
- Strong emphasis on ethics, scope of competence, safeguarding and professional boundaries.
- Applied case discussion, scenario work and structured skills practice.
- Moodle-supported self-directed reading, revision and assessment preparation.
- Attention to attachment, development, trauma and relational processes where relevant.
- Focus on supervision, practitioner self-awareness and countertransference.
- Final integration of learning into safe, reflective and professionally appropriate practice.
What You Will Achieve
Learning Outcomes
- Explain key theories, language and professional concepts relevant to psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application.
- Analyse presentations using integrated biological, psychological, relational and social perspectives.
- Apply structured assessment and formulation principles within the limits of the learner’s role.
- Use clear, respectful and non-stigmatising professional communication.
- Recognise indicators requiring referral, safeguarding action, medical review or multidisciplinary input.
- Integrate appropriate evidence-informed interventions with relational and reflective practice.
- Use Freudian concepts to consider unconscious conflict, defence, repetition and transference.
- Use selected Lacanian concepts to deepen understanding of language, desire and subjectivity where appropriate.
- Reflect on countertransference, assumptions and the practitioner’s use of self.
- Maintain ethical boundaries, confidentiality, informed consent and scope of competence.
- Use supervision and reflective practice to support safe and sustainable professional work.
- Integrate course learning into an ethically bounded plan for continuing professional development.
Good to Know
Additional Information
This programme provides a broad professional foundation in psychoanalytic theory, Freudian and Lacanian concepts and clinical application. It should be applied within each learner’s existing role, competence, training background and ethical responsibilities. Where a presentation involves acute risk, safeguarding, complex medical questions, severe dissociation, statutory intervention or specialist assessment, learners are expected to follow appropriate referral and escalation pathways rather than practise beyond competence.
Live sessions are lecturer-led and may include demonstrations, reflective work, case discussion, skills rehearsal and breakout-room activities. Students are expected to participate actively and to maintain confidentiality when discussing practice material. Any case material brought to class should be sufficiently anonymised. The College may provide recordings of appropriate teaching segments for revision, while routine breakout rooms are not normally recorded.
Students are expected to engage consistently with Moodle, directed reading and assessment preparation. Professional learning in counselling and psychotherapy can evoke personal material; learners should use supervision, personal therapy or other appropriate supports where relevant. ICPS College also expects respectful communication, dignity, inclusivity, a non-judgemental attitude and adherence to College policies, procedures and codes of conduct throughout the programme.
Completion of the Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychoanalysis does not in itself confer a protected professional title or authority to diagnose, prescribe, provide statutory assessment or undertake specialist interventions outside the learner’s existing competence. Students seeking clarification about accreditation, attendance, assessment, progression or professional scope should contact the Registry Office at sheila@icps.ie.
Programme Structure
Course Curriculum — Ten Modules
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to freud and the discovery of the unconscious
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to freud and the discovery of the unconscious
- Freudian lens: Students trace Freud's path from hypnosis to free association, examining how resistance, repression and the symptom revealed a dynamic unconscious, and situating this discovery within its scientific and cultural context.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan's reading of Freud emphasises the unconscious as the discourse of the Other; students explore how jokes, slips and forgetting show the unconscious speaking through gaps in conscious intention.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to drives, conflict & psychic structure
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to drives, conflict & psychic structure
- Freudian lens: Freud's structural model of id, ego and superego, and his later dualism of life and death drives, provide frameworks for reflecting on psychic conflict and the compromises through which the ego mediates competing demands.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan reframes the drive as a montage circling the objet petit a and introduces jouissance, a painful excess of satisfaction, inviting students to reflect on why people may hold on to suffering.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to psychosexual development & early experience
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to psychosexual development & early experience
- Freudian lens: Freud's oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages and the Oedipus complex are examined as historical theories of how early experience shapes desire and identification, read critically in light of contemporary knowledge.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan reinterprets the Oedipus complex through the paternal metaphor and symbolic castration, presenting development as the child's entry into language and law rather than a strictly biological sequence.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to dreams, fantasy, symptoms & symbolic meaning
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to dreams, fantasy, symptoms & symbolic meaning
- Freudian lens: Freud's account of the dream as the royal road to the unconscious and the symptom as a substitute satisfaction helps students explore how disguised meaning emerges through association, displacement and condensation.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan describes the symptom as a message addressed to the Other and later as a mode of jouissance, while fantasy supports desire; students consider how these ideas shape listening to dreams and symptoms.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to ego, defence mechanisms & repetition
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to ego, defence mechanisms & repetition
- Freudian lens: Freud's later ego psychology, developed further by Anna Freud, frames defences such as repression, denial, isolation and undoing as unconscious strategies against anxiety, which may also entrench repetitive patterns.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan critiques ego psychology, viewing the ego as an Imaginary construction built on misrecognition; students reflect on how strengthening the ego differs from enabling the subject to question their own repetitions.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to object relations, attachment & internal worlds
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to object relations, attachment & internal worlds
- Freudian lens: Freud's papers on narcissism and mourning anticipate later object relations theory, showing how lost or loved objects are taken into the ego and continue to influence relationships and self-regard.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan's distinction between the small other of Imaginary identification and the big Other of language offers a critical lens on internal worlds, contrasting object relations with a structural theory of the subject.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to transference, countertransference & working through
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to transference, countertransference & working through
- Freudian lens: Freud's papers on technique describe remembering, repeating and working through, showing how transference allows past conflicts to be lived again in the present relationship and gradually understood rather than simply acted out.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan situates transference in the Symbolic and cautions against Imaginary dyadic relating; students reflect on the analyst's desire, the place of the objet petit a in transference and the ethics of not exploiting it.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to lacan: imaginary, symbolic & real
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to lacan: imaginary, symbolic & real
- Freudian lens: Students consider how Lacan's three registers re-read Freud's concepts, linking the Imaginary to narcissism and identification, the Symbolic to the Oedipal law, and the Real to trauma and the beyond of the pleasure principle.
- Lacanian lens: The module explores the mirror stage, the symbolic order and the Real as interlocking registers, and the later Borromean knot and sinthome as ways of thinking about how a subject holds together.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to lacan: desire, language, lack & the other
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to lacan: desire, language, lack & the other
- Freudian lens: Freud's account of the lost object of satisfaction and the wish that drives the dream provides the ground for Lacan's theory, helping students connect classical concepts of wish and loss with desire and lack.
- Lacanian lens: Students explore desire as metonymy, the gap between need, demand and desire, and the divided subject constituted by the signifier, reflecting on how lack sustains rather than blocks the subject's desire.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
- Core theory and professional concepts relating to clinical formulation, ethics, endings & integration
- Course-specific assessment, formulation or application linked to clinical formulation, ethics, endings & integration
- Freudian lens: A Freudian formulation integrates conflict, defence, transference and repetition, and Freud's reflections on termination inform careful planning of endings, recognising the reactivation of loss and the limits of what treatment can achieve.
- Lacanian lens: Lacan's ethics of desire, the traversal of fantasy and identification with the sinthome are considered as theoretical horizons for endings, held alongside professional codes, informed consent and responsible clinical practice.
- Applied case discussion, reflective exercise or skills practice
Assessment Breakdown
Assessment & Course Completion
Your overall mark is made up of four components, totalling 100%.
- Class Attendance — 10%: A minimum of 80% attendance at live online classes is required, recorded through Zoom.
- Fishbowl Skills Assessment — 30%: A live, observed session assessed by your lecturer. A minimum of 80% is required for the award, and a resubmission opportunity is offered.
- Case Histories 1–5 — 20%: Five linked case histories of 500 words each (4% each), following one client/patient from Module 5 to Module 10.
- Case History 6 — 40%: A 3,000-word full case formulation that brings your earlier case histories together.
Each written case history requires 60% to pass and is marked against the published rubric on Moodle. This grading is the same across all ICPS College Advanced Professional Diplomas.
Credits & Learning Hours
- Live online teaching: 2.5 hours weekly for 10 weeks — 25 hours and 120 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
Live Online Attendance & Self-Directed Learning
Students are required to attend 25 hours of live online lecturer-led Zoom sessions. The normal attendance requirement is 80%, meaning students may normally miss only two classes except where approved extenuating circumstances apply. The wider independent-learning component includes extended reading, revision, applied reflection, skills practice, lecture notes, Moodle resources and supplementary academic materials.
Live Delivery
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.
Learning Platform
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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