The IPU facilitates studies, advanced studies and further education, as well as research with a psychoanalytical basis, and pursues a transdisciplinary understanding of science in its fields of teaching and research.

In a dialogue with other sciences, it contributes to the further development of psychoanalysis as an applied social science and cultural theory.

It conveys psychoanalysis as a science which maps the human as a biological, social and culturally shaped being and which seeks to understand the individual against the background of their personal history and under the influence of the unconscious.