Dr. Mahrou Zhaf, Psya.D., LP

Assistant Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, St. Lawrence University
Licensed Psychoanalyst & Adjunct Professor, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
Training Psychoanalyst & Supervisor, Persepolis Psychoanalytic Institute



Dr. Mahrou Zhaf is a clinical and cultural psychoanalyst who holds two doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychoanalysis and in Psychosocial Studies. Her academic research on cultural psychopathology examines the dynamic relationship between psyche and culture in shaping subjectivity and social imagination, with a particular focus on the Middle East and its diaspora. She studies how individual emotional histories and family structures remain in continuous dialogue with cultural, religious, and colonial legacies—each shaping and reshaping the other. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of psychoanalysis, cultural theory, gender, and postcolonial studies, tracing how these forces together constitute both individual and collective life.

Working between the United States and Iran, she bridges clinical and academic practice, integrating insights from her analytic work with theoretical readings of cultural texts. Her engagement with Iranians both inside Iran and across the diaspora provides a distinctly transnational perspective.

In addition to her academic research and teaching, Dr. Zhaf maintains a psychoanalytic practice in New York State and provides clinical supervision and advanced training to mental health professionals in the United States, Iran, and internationally. This cross-border work directly informs her broader clinical research, which seeks to illuminate how the legacies of war, phallocentrism, and colonialism are inscribed in emotional life and to position psychoanalysis as a vital interpretive tool for understanding the unconscious dimensions of cultural experience. Ultimately, her clinical inquiry aims to develop a culturally informed psychoanalytic theory and practice that moves beyond Euro-American paradigms, rethinking the affective and ideological dimensions of power, gender, and identity in global contexts.