In this time of vulnerable marriages and partnerships, many couples seek help for their relationships. Psychoanalytic couple therapy is a growing application of psychoanalysis for which training is not usually offered in most psychoanalytic and analytic psychotherapy programs. This book is both an advanced text for therapists and a primer for new students of couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Its twenty-eight chapters cover the major ideas underlying the application of psychoanalysis to couple therapy, many clinical illustrations of cases and problems in various dimensions of the work. The international group of authors comes from the International Psychotherapy Institute based in Washington, DC, and the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships (TCCR) in London. The result is a richly international perspective that nonetheless has theoretical and clinical coherence because of the shared vision of the authors.

Winner of the 2014 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship! A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy presents an original model of couples treatment integrating ideas from a host of authors in relational psychoanalysis. It also includes other psychoanalytic traditions as well as ideas from other social sciences. This book addresses a vacuum in contemporary psychoanalysis devoid of a comprehensively relational way to think about the practice of psychoanalytically oriented couples treatment. In this book,Philip Ringstrom sets out a theory of practice that is based on three broad themes: The actualization of self experience in an intimate relationship The partners' capacity for mutual recognition versus mutual negation The relationship having a mind of its own Based on these three themes, Ringstrom's model of treatment is articulated in six non-linear, non-hierarchical steps that wed theory with practice - each powerfully illustrated with case material. These steps initially address the therapist’s attunement to the partners' disparate subjectivities including the critical importance of each one's perspective on the "reality" they co-habit.Their perspectives are fleshed out through the exploration of their developmental histories with focus on factors of gender and culture and more. Out of this arises the examination of how conflictual pasts manifest in dissociated self-states, the illumination of which lends to the enrichment of self-actualization, the facilitation of mutual recognition, and the capacity to more genuinely renegotiate their relationship. The book concludes with a chapter that illustrates one couple treated through all six steps and a chapter on frequently asked questions ("FAQ's") derived from over thirty years of practice, teaching, supervision and presentations during the course of this books development. A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy balances a great range of ways to work with couples, while also providing the means to authentically negotiate their differences in a way which is insightful and invaluable. This book is for practitioners of couples therapy and psychoanalytic practitioners. It is also aimed at undergraduate, graduates, and postgraduate students in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, marriage and family therapy, and social work.

Introduction : core concepts of the Tavistock couple psychotherapy model / Shelley Nathans -- Couples on the couch : working psychoanalytically with couple relationships / Stanley Ruszczynski -- Discussion of "couples on the couch : working psychoanalytically with couple relationships" / Rachel Cooke -- Unconscious beliefs about being a couple / Mary Morgan -- Discussion of "unconscious beliefs about being a couple" : beliefs about a couple and beliefs about the other / Milton Schaefer -- The Macbeths in the consulting room / James V. Fisher -- Discussion of "the Macbeths in the consulting room" / Shelley Nathans -- Psychotic and depressive processes in couple functioning / Francis Grier -- Discussion of "psychotic and depressive processes in couple functioning" / Julie Friend -- Romantic bonds, binds and ruptures : couples on the brink / Virginia Goldner -- Discussion of "romantic bonds, binds and ruptures : couples on the brink" / Rachael Peltz -- How was it for you? Attachment, sexuality and mirroring in couple relationships / Christopher Clulow -- Discussion of "how was it for you? Attachment, mirroring, and the psychotherapeutic process with couples" / Leora Benioff -- Growing old together in mind and body / Andrew Balfour -- Discussion of "growing old together in mind and body" / Leslye Russell.

A Couple State of Mind is a much anticipated book aimed at an international audience of practitioners, students and teachers of psychoanalytic couple therapy, describes the Tavistock Relationships model of couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy, drawing on both historical and contemporary ideas, including the author’s own theoretical contributions. The book references contemporary influences of other psychoanalytic approaches to couples, particularly from an international perspective. It will be invaluable for all students learning about psychoanalytic work with couples for other psychoanalytic practitioners interested in this field.

Psychoanalytic Work with Families and Couples rethinks the ways in which conflicts present today in psychoanalytic consulting rooms and the nature of suffering in family, couple, and sibling bonds. Based on two major concepts, that of device (drawn from the philosophers Foucault, Deleuze, and Agamben) and that of link (developed by Berenstein and Puget), the authors have developed new approaches to clinical practice with families and couples that focus on the complexity, singularity, and immanence of patient-analyst interaction in the session. In thinking about link dynamics, moreover, they go beyond the consulting room to reflect on how these dynamics develop in other spaces, such as institutions, organizations, and the fraternal circle of colleagues. Part I, Couples and Families Today, discusses changes undergone by families and couples in the last thirty years and their effects on psychoanalytic practice. Attributing a link logic to suffering and to the situations that condition it implies making significant decisions regarding our clinical strategy, our choice of a device and of an interpretive path. Faithful to the idea that the clinical dimension calls for transformations, the second part, Facing Clinical Challenges, includes clinical materials from manifold treatment devices that attest to changes both in contemporary paradigms and in the professional lives of psychoanalysts. Psychoanalytic Work with Families and Couples will be of great interest to all practicing psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

Couple psychotherapy extends the work of the psychotherapist to the patient’s most significant committed adult relationship, yet the therapy is difficult both conceptually and technically. One major reason for this difficulty is that in every couple’s treatment there is a confusing array of psychological defenses as well as regressive and nonregressive couple object relations-as distinct from the object relations that each individual member brings to the couple. Further, many of these processes are occurring outside consciousness and at the very same time. This book is an attempt to clarify all the confusing issues by presenting a three-factor model of couple psychotherapy within a psychodynamic framework. This model has been found to be very effective with many different kinds of couples. The book suggests that there are three powerful couple dynamics that shape every couple’s treatment: (A) the quality and quantity of the couple’s projective identifications; (B) the level of their “couple object relations”; and (C) the presence or absence of the defense of omnipotent control. These three variables are the most important factors in the therapy; they determine the success or failure of every therapy with every couple. These dynamics also determine quite a bit about how to conduct a couple therapy with regard to the therapist’s level of activity, tone, the way of sorting the material in his or her head, and even the kinds of interventions he/she chooses (whether or not, for example, the therapist will use certain resistance techniques). Understanding these three variables and how they interact is key to the success of the therapy.

In this landmark book, David Scharff and Jill Savege Scharff, both psychoanalysts, develop a way of thinking about and working with the couple as a small group of two, held together as a tightly knit system by a commitment that is powerfully reinforced by the bond of mutual sexual pleasure.