Sirs,

I thought it would be of interest to the members of the international analytic community who read the International Forum of Psychoanalysis to convey briefly my impressions on visiting Iran. At the invitation of Dr. Mahdieh Moin and Professor Mohammad Sanati of the psychotherapy department of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, I attended the 3rd International Psychoanalytical Congress. Some 700 people came to the Congress. I was also asked to do a three-day teaching workshop for a private training course outside the University, run by Dr. Babak Roshanaie, an International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) member in private practice in Iran. I was surprised by this current interest in psychoanalysis, especially within the psychiatric services and among the trainee psychiatrists.

Mohammed Sanati, an emeritus professor at the university, has been teaching psychoanalytic psychotherapy for the last 32 years, after he studied in England and returned to Iran. His dedicated efforts have paved the way for postrevolution psychoanalysis to evolve despite all the adversities. In fact, at the recent IPA Congress in July 2019, Professor Sanati was given an award for his “Extraordinary Meritorious Contribution” to psychoanalysis.

I was also invited by Babak Roshanaie who is one of three IPA members working in Tehran. Babak invited me to give theoretical and clinical seminars to students at his centre. He himself trained in Seattle, USA, becoming an IPA member, and returned to Iran nine years ago. He joined Gohar Homayounpour, trained in Boston, USA, who had been working in Iran since 2006, and more recently Elahe Sagart has returned from Los Angeles. Touraj Moradi is a member of the European Council for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and has been teaching self-psychology for over 20 years. Mahdieh Moin has been studying at the Tavistock Clinic and is a British Psychotherapy Council member. Together with Mohammad Sanati, they have succeeded in taking psychoanalysis into the psychiatry residency program. Mahdieh has set up a Psychotherapy Fellowship qualification at the university for postresident psychiatrists, some of whose graduates I also met in other cities, including Yazd and Kerman.

As well as these details of persons, I gained strong personal impressions in my two weeks giving seminars and touring the old cities with the young Fellowship students and graduates as guides. I was impressed by their enthusiasm for these ideas from the West. Psychiatrists have developed a strong emphasis on psychodynamics, which is of greater interest to many trainees than diagnostic and pharmaceutical psychiatry. Such a blend between dynamics and diagnostics contrasts with Western psychiatry at the present time. The impressive number of 700 people attending the 3rd Congress indicates an extraordinary development of interest, which dwarfs that of many European countries. The scale of the interest warranted, in fact, a news item on national television.

It is also of interest that this occurs in the context of a country that is caught up in fraught international relations with the USA and the West. My impression was that, despite the animosity at government level, there was a strong interest in Western ideas at the level of the general population, and psychoanalysis benefits from that. The impact of sanctions on the country for 40 years, and the recent increase in their severity, has it seems led to a strong resilience in which the economy has not drastically suffered (even though the currency has). Rather, the country has become more and more self-sufficient, and looks with pride to the very long history of more than 3500 years of Iranian/Persian culture. The ability to absorb Western ideas does not seem to have pushed away the traditional culture, as has occurred in other countries that have newly regenerated on the basis of Western influences. Perhaps it is the very fact of the animosities that has enabled a more balanced absorption of new ideas such as psychoanalysis.

I have written this letter to inform the readership of this journal, and the community of psychoanalysts in

general, of a swelling tide of interest in psychoanalysis in Iran that has not been well known and has perhaps been overshadowed by the darker impression of Iran currently encountered in the Western media. These are largely personal impressions and, if of interest, should be set beside the knowledge that I spent only 14 days there. I did, however, have a chance to meet many professional people who were all willing to inform me of their country, its history and present problems, and their enthusiasm for psychoanalytic ideas and practice.

Hinshelwood, B. (2019) Psychoanalysis in Iran. International Forum of Psychoanalysis 28:249-250