The International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) Berlin is a state-recognised private university accredited by the German Council of Science and Humanities, the Wissenschaftsrat, which is owned and managed by the non-profit representative legal entity, the Foundation to Promote University Psychoanalysis. It combines exacting scientific standards with practical psychology study courses (BA and MA courses), as well as with study courses in psychosis therapy, psychoanalytical cultural studies, leadership and consulting, intended to be taken part-time parallel to work. The university campus is situated directly at the Spree River in the Berlin-Mitte district. With the commencement of lectures at the IPU in 2009, a gap was closed that had arisen in the one-sided, natural sciences direction of the academic psychology study courses. The study courses at the IPU convey psychoanalysis as a science that maps the human as a biological, social and culturally shaped being and that seeks to understand the individual against the background of their personal history and under the influence of the unconscious. All of the study courses at the IPU are both research and application oriented, and provide close contact with clinical and pedagogical practice from the first study semester.