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A series of eight lectures from leaders in the field of psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy
Since its establishment in 1948 Tavistock Relationships has been instrumental in building a rich and effective therapeutic model to support couple relationships. The model is based on the principles of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and grounded in decades of research, offering a depth approach to working with the couple relationship.
This series of lectures provides a comprehensive exploration of psychoanalytic perspectives on couple relationships as well as an understanding of how to work therapeutically with couples and is suitable for anyone working with couples, interested to start working with couples or simply interested in the complexities inherent in being in a relationship.
The talks include the importance of the interplay of past influences, present dynamics, as well as the future potential in couple relationships, framing the couple as vehicle for creative development throughout the life cycle.
The discussions encompass critical clinical aspects of couples work, including navigating the complex terrain of transference and countertransference, and adopting a distinctive approach that acknowledges the presence of three individuals in the therapeutic space.
These lectures collectively offer insights which will enrich your understanding of psychoanalytic approaches to the complexity of couple relationships.
Mary Morgan will describe the particular ways in which the couple relationship is viewed and treated in couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy as it has evolved over nearly 75 years at TR. She will consider the influence of the past and the ways in which relationships are often set up to repeat, manage or work through unresolved early conflicts and anxieties. She will look at the nature of the relationship in the present, shaped by the couple’s psychic development, unconscious phantasies, narcissistic relating and projective system. The third area, that of the future, emphasises the idea of the adult couple relationship as having the potential for development. It has the capacity to create something new, linked to the concept of the creative couple.
Much analytic work with individual patients takes place on the intricately layered terrain made up of our patients’ complex and shifting transference to their therapist and our own interpretations informed by the corresponding countertransference. Speaking to patients about our understanding of what is alive in the two-some of the analytic couple at any given moment is fundamental and lends each treatment its unique and particular atmosphere. This constantly changing transferential web holds within itself a multitude of repetitions and enactments waiting for interpretation. Krisztina Glausius in her lecture will consider the opportunities brought about by the introduction of the couple and their relationship into this already complex matrix. The extra dimension of ‘the third’ can both muddy the waters and clear up previously murky aspects of both the couple’s relationship and the internal world of each partner.
People are living longer, with many of us now reaching an age that would have been considered very old a generation ago. Our increased longevity presents us with particular psychological challenges, such as how to tolerate the losses of our physical and mental functioning. The feared catastrophes of old age, such as stroke or dementia, hang over us as possible futures most of us would rather not think about. Andrew will examine the difficulties many couples experience in facing the losses of old age. He will outline the factors that help us to sustain a lively engagement in life and an intimacy within relationships even in the face of these losses.
Stanley Ruszczynski will describe his understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of narcissism, including how it is essential to our understanding of, and clinical work with, couples. Stan will reference the space within which interactions between two people take place, a space he has previously referred to as ‘the marital triangle’. This might be a benign place of mutual recognition, within which both connection and separateness may be recognised, and hence a space for psychic development; or, it might be a malignant place, with very fragile or no awareness of the other’s separateness, resulting in psychic stagnation and sado-masochistic dynamics. Awareness of the other’s separateness creates space in the relationship; lack of that awareness, with the other being experienced as primarily an extension of the self, collapses the space.
Susanna Abse will give a psychoanalytic account of intimacy and discuss how intimate couple relationships require both ego fluidity and ego strength. She will show how intimacy between partners includes the merging of self and other boundaries and how this capacity to enter another’s experience, which is developed in infancy, is vital to satisfying emotional and sexual engagement. However, in therapeutic work with couples we also see how the breaking down of self/other boundaries can lead to destructive cycles of relating via projective identification. Susanna will offer clinical insights into identifying and differentiating these two ways of relating and she will discuss how the work of couple psychotherapists can strengthen the individual egos of each partner to bring about greater intimacy.
Historically, psychoanalysis has been credited for its transformative influence through interpreting transference within the patient-analyst relationship, employing language as the medium—the 'talking cure.' However, this framework poses challenges for therapists working with adult couples, where conflicts from the past resonate powerfully. Psychoanalysts recognise that foundational relationship assumptions form unconsciously before language symbolizes experiences. John Bowlby's attachment theory has fueled research, validating psychoanalytic principles and contributing to the understanding of transformative potential in relationships. This transformative capacity extends beyond specific therapeutic approaches, aligning with non-specific factors identified in psychotherapy outcome studies. This discussion explores these factors as integral to the interpretative process, shaping and resulting in therapeutic change.
In this talk, Leezah Hertzmann will describe some contemporary developments in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality from a post-heteronormative standpoint, including an exploration of how heteronormative bias has relegated lived sexual experience to the side-lines. She will explore the role played by conscious and unconscious homophobia, the centrality of internalised homophobia, and the complexity of shame and its après coup nature. Whilst shame is a ubiquitous feeling and may not be relevant for all LGBTQI+ people, Leezah will discuss how there are elements of this struggle within all of us which can have an important bearing on both the analytic and supervisory relationships. Advocating a more flexible encounter in the consulting room whilst maintaining the frame can potentially illuminate an understanding of all sexualities including heterosexuality. Case examples will be discussed and clinical challenges and dilemmas considered.
Susan Pacey offers therapists insights into the challenges of working with body, mind and relationship when couples present with sexual problems. Currently clients seeking help must choose between a psychoanalytic/psychodynamic approach, which mostly addresses unconscious mental models of relating, and psychosexual therapy, which focuses primarily on the body and conscious couple interaction. In this way the profession seems to mirror the psychic splitting of sex and love, which Freud first identified and which is a common phenomenon in clinical work. There is a growing number of psychotherapists, however, who are working with both approaches and Pacey discusses psychological barriers to and benefits of integration.
Andrew Balfour is Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships. He originally trained as a clinical psychologist at University College London and then as an adult psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, whilst in a staff post there. He subsequently trained as a couple psychotherapist at Tavistock Relationships, where for more than 10 years he was Clinical Director before becoming Chief Executive in 2016. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples, developing new projects and conducting research. He has published numerous papers in the field and has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. His most recent book is Engaging Couples - New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families (edited by Andrew Balfour, Christopher Clulow, and Kate Thompson, Routledge, 2019).
Mary Morgan is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She worked and lectured at Tavistock Relationships for more than two decades. She has been as Reader in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and was head of the couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy training, MA and PD. She has a particular interest in the psychoanalytic understanding of couple relationships and the technique of couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy, about which she has published many papers. She has given lectures at many international conferences and has taught about couple relationships around the world. She is the author of the highly-regarded book 'A Couple State of Mind' which examines the Tavistock Relationships Model for Psychoanalysis of Couples and includes contemporary influences of psychoanalytic approaches to couples.
Krisztina Glausius is a couple and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a visiting supervisor and lecturer at Tavistock Relationships where she has formerly worked as Head of Clinical Services.
Krisztina has developed several innovative approaches ranging from brief time-limited couple therapy through to services providing therapeutic support to adopting parents or conflicted separating couples. She has co-authored papers resulting from these and other projects. She has published guides to support parents who separate as well as for professionals who are looking for ways to understand and work with couples.
She has worked as a senior research psychotherapist on TR’s randomized controlled trial examining the effectiveness of its Parents in Conflict Service and was part of the clinical team delivering the Parents in Dispute Project, a Mentalization based intervention aimed at helping high conflict separated parental couples to ensure better outcomes for their children. Both of these roles involve a creative application of analytically informed therapeutic work with couples, groups and individuals.
Stanley Ruszczynski is a psychoanalyst and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. He was a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist in the Portman Clinic from 1997 until his retirement in 2021, including holding the post of Clinical Director between 2005 and 2016.
He was a staff member at Tavistock Relationships between 1982 and 1997, including holding the posts of Clinical Co-ordinator, Training Co-ordinator and, between 1987 and 1993, Deputy Director.
He has authored many book chapters and articles, and has been a contributing editor and co-editor of five books, including Psychotherapy with Couples (Karnac, 1993), Intrusiveness and Intimacy in the Couple (Karnac, 1995, with James Fisher) and Lectures on Violence, Perversion and Delinquency (Karnac, 2007, with David Morgan).
Susanna Abse has worked as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with couples for over 30 years, an experience she shares in her 2022 book, Tell Me the Truth about Love. Previously, she was the CEO of Tavistock Relationships, the leading centre for training, research and clinical services for couples. Until 2021, she was the chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council, and is now a trustee of the Freud Museum in London, and the Association of Infant Mental Health. In 2019, she presented Britain on the Couch, a series of films for Channel 4 News. Susanna is the co-editor of The Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis for Routledge Books, and is a senior fellow of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. She works in central London at the Queen Anne Street Practice for Psychological Therapies.
Christopher Clulow is a Consultant Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, a Senior Fellow of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and Fellow of the Centre for Social Policy, Dartington. He is a past Director of Tavistock Relationships, and until recently was Editor in Chief of the international journal Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. He has published extensively on couple and family relationships, most recently from an attachment perspective, and continues in an emeritus capacity to teach in this country and abroad.
Dr Susan Pacey has been a psychosexual and couple psychotherapist for 30 years. In 2018 she completed the Doctor of Couple Psychotherapy Programme at Tavistock Relationships (TR), having gained an MA in Psychoanalysis, Attachment and the Couple Relationship at TR in 2010. She is the author of the book Sensate Focus and the Psyche - Integrating Sense and Sexuality in Couple Therapy based on the key findings of her doctoral study. She has written papers on the medicalisation of sex, the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on sexual relationships, circumcision, female genital mutilation and other aspects of sexuality.
Leezah Hertzmann is principal couple and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and in private practice. Previously, she worked at Tavistock Relationships where she developed the MBT intervention and service for parental conflict.
She has a career-long interest in psychoanalytic theory and technique with LGBTQ+ individuals and couples and is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council's Advisory Committee on Sexual and Gender Diversity. She has been the recipient of two British Psychoanalytic Council awards: one in 2015 for innovation in relation to developing the MBT evidence-based intervention service at TR for parental conflict, and the second in 2019 with Juliet Newbigin, for Psychoanalysis and Diversity.
Leezah teaches and publishes widely and her most recent publication, authored with Juliet, is entitled Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality: a Contemporary Introduction, published by Routledge.
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