The UCL Psychoanalysis Unit’s groundbreaking work has put psychoanalytic ideas to rigorous scientific testing, developing effective treatments for some of the hardest-to-treat patients while preserving the depth that makes them psychoanalytic. Since 2016, under the leadership of Director Dr. Elizabeth Allison, the Unit has joined psychoanalytic thinking with developmental psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, and the social sciences. Its team developed and tested Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), which strengthens mentalizing: the capacity to understand ourselves and others in terms of thoughts and feelings.
In borderline personality disorder, randomized trials show MBT reduces self-harm and improves functioning. In a landmark trial published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2025, men on probation with antisocial personality disorder who received MBT showed about half the aggression of a comparison group and committed significantly fewer offenses over three years. Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy, developed and tested by Psychoanalysis Unit researchers and clinicians, is now recognized by England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and funded as a national treatment within the National Health Service. The Unit’s research on epistemic trust, our capacity to trust and learn from others, connects psychoanalytic ideas to questions of misinformation and social polarization, illustrating how the work remains a living research program rather than a finished product.
Founded by psychoanalyst Joseph Sandler, the Unit has trained more than 200 master’s and 64 doctoral students from over 20 countries since 2016, many of whom go on to full psychoanalytic training. It has engaged the public through 26 free public seminars, art exhibitions at the Freud Museum in London, and Lockdown Dreams, animated films drawn from more than 500 dreams recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unit members have also advised NICE on clinical guidelines and provided national clinical leadership within NHS England. Even analysts initially wary of measuring psychoanalytic ideas have concluded that the Unit’s work remains psychoanalytic at its core.