Some day the conscience of society will awaken and admonish it that the poor have just as much right to help for their minds as they already have to lifesaving surgical help, and that neuroses threaten the health of the people no less than tuberculosis … [On that day] these treatments (“talking cures”) will be free of charge.’
Sigmund Freud Budapest 1918
The APP
The APP is the association for professionals and students of all disciplines and backgrounds, who work in the NHS, public, or voluntary sector providing psychoanalytically informed care. Our shared mission is to promote the highest standards of applied psychoanalytic and psychodynamic work and thinking in the health care system, across the whole age range. We also share the founding values of the NHS to provide prompt access to treatment, free at the point of need, to all people who can benefit.
The APP believes that all patients can expect their treatment and care to be delivered expertly and safely by practitioners with the right training and skills, whose work is appropriately supported and regulated. We are also actively involved in developing and promoting the evidence base for effective psychoanalytic psychotherapies, and in supporting patient choice and patient-centred care in the public sector.
Much of APP’s work is to support the professional development of all our members. We strive to be a model for an inclusive community of shared professional interests to improve social cohesion and emotional wellbeing. To this end we seek to champion innovative and effective psychoanalytic treatments, and increase availability of psychoanalytic care in all public settings.
We offer benefits to our members in a number of ways:
- producing a journal with online access to its back issues
- distributing a regular newsletter
- an annual conference, in partnership with other psychoanalytic organisations
- a dedicated website with news and event listings
- offering networks of special interest groups for example, primary care, older adults, practitioner-led research, each of these with CPD components
- forming and maintaining links with other national and international organisations with related aims
- engaging with the bodies responsible for the development and provision of public sector services