Intrusiveness and Intimacy in the Couple


Book Description

A collection of papers, largely based on clinical work, which covers a range of concepts and mechanisms which are central to any psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children, adolescents, or adults. It addresses an issue which lies at the heart of human relationships, that of intimacy.




A Couple State of Mind


Book Description

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.




Family and Couple Psychoanalysis


Book Description

This book explores family interaction and family psychoanalysis from varying standpoints used around the world. It illustrates these with extensive clinical cases discussed from varying perspectives. The book is the first in a series of volumes from the International Psychoanalytical Association's Working Group on Family and Couple Psychoanalysis, drawn from its ongoing research into comparative theories and methods of working analytically with families and couples, and with varying types of family structure. It also applies lessons from family psychoanalysis to analytic theory and to the practice of individual psychoanalysis.




Winnicott and 'Good Enough' Couple Therapy


Book Description

Claire Rabin innovatively applies the Winnicottian theory of the ‘good enough mother’ to couple therapy, redirecting attention to the therapeutic relationship and the therapist’s self-awareness regardless of the methods used. Using this lens, even the therapist’s mistakes become an opportunity for repairing both the therapeutic relationship and the partners’ own personal maturity. The intensity and pressure of couple therapy can make each case a test of the therapist’s competence. The need for neutrality constitutes on-going pressure on the therapist and the proliferation of therapeutic methods can cause confusion about which might be most useful in each situation. Applying theory effectively is easier said than done within the context of the powerful emotions unleashed in sessions, which can result in a catastrophic atmosphere. These factors can make it hard for therapists to utilise their own skills and knowledge within sessions of couple therapy. The book explores how therapists and couples can unintentionally further ‘false selves’ without realising how the very tools of change may counter authenticity. Featuring interviews with an international range of couple therapists and case studies from the author’s own experiences, the key aspects of the ‘good enough’ concept are elaborated. Rabin shows how these ideas can strengthen therapists’ sense of security and safety in using their lived experience and intuition. Winnicott and Good Enough Couple Therapy is the ideal book for clinicians seeking an overarching framework for working with couples or families, as well as those concerned with the importance of the client-helper relationship.




Couples as Parents


Book Description

Couples as Parents: Explorations in Couple Therapy explores the complex task of parenting from the perspective of the couple relationship. A book for clinicians and parents alike, it describes problems that can occur during the transition to parenthood and the initial decision to have a child to raising young children and adolescents. The book offers a comprehensive exploration of the nature and patterns of intimate partner relationships and how they can be affected by such things as the loss of a baby, raising a child with autism or adoption. Chapters delve into issues unique to same-sex parents and those facing an empty nest. With moving clinical examples, it illustrates how a couple's sex life can be altered on becoming parents and describes how parents can best help their children as they separate. Couples as Parents explains how couple therapy has a unique stance with which to help parents and describes clinical vignettes that demonstrate how parents have been helped in the past. The book considers the historical context of couple relationships, utilises research and psychoanalytic ways of thinking to further understanding for psychotherapists and interested parents, as well as offering a variety of therapeutic approaches to the specific needs of parents, whether as a couple, separated or single.




Intrusiveness and Intimacy in the Couple


Book Description

"A collection of papers, largely based on clinical work, which covers a range of concepts and mechanisms which are central to any psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children, adolescents, or adults. It addresses an issue which lies at the heart of human relationships, that of intimacy."--Provided by publisher.




Same-Sex Couples and Other Identities


Book Description

This book provides a contemporary exploration of psychoanalytic theory and its application to therapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer relationships, challenging heteronormative practice and introducing new perspectives on working with gender and sexual diversity. In this wide-ranging collection, international contributors draw on key aspects of couple psychoanalytic theory and practice, whilst also expanding hetero and mono-normative frames of reference to explore the nature of relating in open, closed and poly relationships. Developments in regard to gender and sexuality within the contexts of family and culture and an examination of same-sex parenting are also included, as are psychosexual considerations and the process of aging. A major focus of the book is the importance of the therapist’s own gender and sexuality in the clinical encounter and how to manage adjustments in approach to counter the dominance of heteronormative thinking in practice. The first book of its kind to incorporate an in-depth examination of same sex, queer, bi-sex, trans and queer relationships in regard to psychoanalytic thinking and practice, Same-Sex Couples and Other Identities is a vital resource for psychoanalytically informed psychotherapists, counsellors and practitioners working with a diverse range of clients.




Keeping Couples in Treatment


Book Description

Keeping Couples in Treatment: Working from Surface to Depth is written for the beginning or seasoned therapist who wants to learn a powerful and effective in-depth approach for keeping couples in treatment. The book focuses on the problems that present themselves when the therapist lacking in-depth knowledge of couple treatment loses empathy and curiosity, resulting in a feeling that couple therapy presents an overwhelming task. Therapists who embark on couple work need practice theory for making meaningful contact with the couple’s internal conflicts. In the surface to depth approach the treatment field consists of two spouses, their unconscious relationship, and the therapist. Therapists may micro-manage couple emotions because they cannot conceive ways to deal with couple anxieties because their own anxieties run so high. This book illustrates the therapist’s use of self and the theory behind this powerful treatment approach that can help therapists more effectively manage treatment anxieties. For the beginning couple therapist, this book offers an object relations rationale for treatment and an expansion of the technical shifts from individual therapy to couples. The book guides the inexperienced therapist through the couple’s pain, rage, and attacks on the frame when in deeply distressing situations. For the experienced therapist the book emphasizes the couple as an unconscious and conscious system best treated using an in-depth understanding of intrapsychic-interpsychic communications. Couple situations demonstrate a treatment that experienced therapists will find liberating. Throughout the book the therapist’s countertransference and use of self as a therapeutic instrument is examined. Divorce, infidelity, dreams, and disorders of the self are detailed in the case materials. The cases represent a variety of problems difficult to treat at any level of therapist experience. The book studies the therapist’s personal feelings and countertransference throughout treatment that enables the reader to hone his or her capacity to deal with difficult couples.




Divorce


Book Description

Divorce: Emotional Impact and Therapeutic Interventions offers a broad survey of psychodynamic observations on the antecedents and consequences of divorce. In this volume, distinguished clinical psychologists and psychoanalysts explore the emotional divorce that invariably precedes the one granted by a court and focus as well upon the emotional impact of the actual divorce upon the spouses, children, friends, and family. Examining a variety of modern families, chapters address both short-term and long-term sequelae of divorce, transgenerational reverberations, and the occasional, unsung benefits of divorce. The concept of a “good-enough divorce” further illustrates how the adverse effects of divorce can be kept at a minimum, and the process itself can allow patients unexpected self-reflection. A valuable resource for clinicians, Divorce: Emotional Impact and Therapeutic Interventions demonstrates how therapists and patients can work through a divorce to yield deeper insights into the self, greater tolerance of one’s own limitations, and lay the groundwork for contentment with a future partner.




Couple and Family Psychoanalysis Volume 2 Number 2


Book Description

Couple and Family Psychoanalysis is an international journal sponsored by Tavistock Relationships, which aims to promote the theory and practice of working with couple and family relationships from a psychoanalytic perspective. It seeks to provide a forum for disseminating current ideas and research and for developing clinical practice. The annual subscription provides two issues a year. Articles - Personality Disorder: A Diagnosis of Disordered Relating by Stanley Ruszczynski - Viewing the Absence of Sex from Couple Relationships Through the “Core Complex” Lens by Amita Sehgal - Infidelity as Manic Defence by Shelley Nathans - Lack of Self-Disclosure and Verbal Communication About Emotions as a Precipitant of Affairs by Shosh Carmel - Children of Oedipus by Penelope Jools - The “Original Couple”: Enabling Mothers and Infants to Think About What Destroys as Well as Engenders Love, When There Has Been Intimate Partner Violence by Sarah Jones and Wendy Bunston - Mutual Madness: the erotic transference between Jung and Spielrein by Coline Covington