Wedded couple with bride holding flowers and sunshine ray falling on them
CPD Credits
24
Event Type
Live In-Person Event
Location
10 New Street, London EC2M 4TP
Time (UK)
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Standard
£980.00
Trainee/NHS
£833.00
Wedded couple with bride holding flowers and sunshine ray falling on them
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 - Friday, July 18, 2025

Couple Therapy Summer School 2025

Creative Coupling

With Andrew Balfour, Alison Bruce, Martha Doniach, Liz Hamlin, Damian McCann, Mary Morgan, Marian O’Connor, Stanley Ruszczynski, Amita Sehgal & Kate Thompson

Join us for our annual Summer School exploring creative coupling in psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy. We will examine the concept of the creative couple it’s role in internal psychic development and in relationships, while also considering other psychological thirds that influence couple dynamics. Through theoretical discussions and clinical perspectives, we will uncover the challenges and possibilities of supporting the development of the creative couple in the relationships we work with.

The Summer School is for psychodynamic and psychoanalytic couple-trained therapists and we will consider applications from highly experienced psychoanalytically trained therapists working with individuals who have an interest in couples work. This intensive training week provides a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in cutting-edge thinking with a world-leading couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy institute.

You will learn and grow as a therapist through theoretical seminars and twice-daily intensive clinical discussion groups, and will study alongside like-minded people from the UK and around the world. Included in the course fee is an evening drink receptions to connect with your colleagues, a theatre ticket to see the highly acclaimed play Till the Stars Come Down, which will be attended as a group on the Wednesday evening with a discussion the following day, and depth learning with experts in the field.

To make an application, please fill in this form: Summer School Application Form 2025

Programme

10.00 Arrival
10.15 Introductions 
10.30 Mary Morgan
The Creative Couple and Other ‘Thirds’ 

The concept of the creative couple (Morgan, 2005) is described as an internal psychic development and as a capacity in a couple relationship. Finding a creative couple capacity in a relationship can be difficult to achieve and some reasons why this might be so, are suggested. There are other psychological ‘thirds’ in couple relationships conceptualised from different theoretical perspectives. These will be considered alongside, and seen as sometimes overlapping with, a creative couple capacity.

11.45 Break
12.00 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin, and Stanley Ruszczynski 
13.15 Lunch
14.15 Marian O'Connor
Creative coupling - what’s sex got to do with it?

Why is it difficult to talk about intimate sexual matters with couples? What can be done to effect change? This seminar will explore how feelings of shame, ignorance,   intrusiveness may be activated in psychotherapists and communicated to patients, preventing a creative and open exploration of the sexual relationship. 

15.30 Break
15.45 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin, and Stanley Ruszczynski 
17.00 Drinks Reception

10.00 Damian McCann 
Creative Couple Processes When Working With Open and Polyamorous Relationships

Within the context of intimate relationships, there are many and competing narratives about the nature of these partnerships and the value attached to them. For instance, the centrality of the primary couple, the dyad, rooted in romantic love, sit in opposition to more open and polyamorous relationships, since these relational configurations appear to challenge both normative and mono-normative assumptions concerning the legitimacy of couple relating. With that in mind, how then might we think about and incorporate the concept of the ‘creative couple’ for those in non-exclusive couple relationships? How does intimacy, so much at the heart of creative couple process, operate in open and poly relationships? 

11.15 Break
11.45 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin, and Stanley Ruszczynski 
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Amita Sehgal
The Threatening Third: Working with Betrayal in Couples

Introducing a third into a couple’s relationship can dismantle their relationship structure. This third can be their first baby, a new job, or even a couple therapist. Couple psychotherapy presents one such triangular formation where emotions can get triggered in response to primitive anxieties of oedipal exclusion, or the anxiety about containment if one oedipally triumphs. In this presentation the therapeutic potential of the framework within which couple psychotherapy takes place is explored. We shall also consider how the triangular configuration offers a developmental opportunity for addressing and managing these primitive anxieties associated with triangular relationships.

15.15 Break
15.45 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin, and Stanley Ruszczynski 
17.00 End
19.30 Theatre Visit
Till the Stars Come Down

Everyone loves a wedding…

It’s Sylvia and Marek’s wedding and you are all invited.

Over the course of a hot summer’s day, a family gathers to welcome a newcomer into their midst. But as the vodka flows and dances are shared, passions boil over and the limits of love are tested.

What happens when the happiest day of your life opens the door to a new, frightening and uncertain future?

 

10.00 Theatre Discussion with Martha Doniach 
11.15 Break
11.45 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin and Stanley Ruszczynski
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Andrew Balfour
The Ageing Couple: Developmental Challenges to Creative Engagement in Later Life

What might help us to continue to live our lives, and inhabit our relationships, as creatively as possible in late life?  We are all challenged by the prospect of our mortality, and by the encroaching realities of ageing.   Whether we can engage emotionally with these ‘facts of life’ has significant implications for our relationships – with ourselves, our partners, and others in our lives.  Some of the developmental challenges of later life will be explored – considering both developmental and anti-developmental factors which underpin creative engagement in couples negotiating this phase of life. 

15.15 Break
15.45 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin and Stanley Ruszczynski 
17.00 End

10.00 Kate Thompson
Making Repair Following the Rupture of an Affair

Understanding the meaning of an affair and working alongside a couple as they try to make repair to their relationship is familiar therapeutic territory for couple psychotherapists. Ambivalence, guilt, fear, anger and lack of trust fuel the emotional storm that may be present in the consulting room, knocking the couple off course and threatening the couple therapist’s central stance. Making links to Bion and Winnicott, this seminar will explore therapeutic techniques and ideas to help the couple regain their creativity and couple boundary, perhaps in ways not experienced before the affair. Attendees are asked to attend with relevant clinical material in mind.

11.15 Break
11.30 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin and Stanley Ruszczynski 
12.45 Lunch
13.15 Alison Bruce
Challenges in Working with the Parental Couple

When a couple decide to have children, the move from being two to three can often bring havoc to bear on the couple, tensions mount and previously held beliefs about the couple relationship can falter. Likewise, when children finally leave home, as in the empty nest syndrome, reverting back to the original twosome can also be challenging. This seminar will consider clinical vignettes illustrating how couple theory guided the therapist when working with two different families as they moved through these turbulent times of the life cycle.

14.30 Break
14.45 Clinical Discussion Groups with Liz Hamlin and Stanley Ruszczynski 
16.00 Cerificates and Goodbyes

Stanley Ruszczynski

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).

Damian McCann

Damian McCann D.Sys.Psych. is a psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist working as visiting lecturer at Tavistock Relationships, London, adjunct faculty member of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) Washington, DC, an associate of Queen Anne Street Practice, London, and an editorial board member of Couple & Family Psychoanalysis, He is also a consultant systemic psychotherapist with many years of experience working with children, adolescents, and their families. He has a particular interest in working with gender and sexual diversity in psychoanalytic practice and has published and taught widely on this topic. His doctoral research was concerned with understanding the meaning and impact of violence in the couple relationships of gay men and is involved in developing approaches to working with couples more generally in which there is violence and abuse. His edited book ‘Same-Sex Couples and Other Identities: Psychoanalytic Perspectives’ was published by Routledge in 2021.

Martha Doniach

Martha Doniach, MA, UKCP, BPC, is an adult and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She previously served as Principal Psychotherapist at East London NHS Foundation Trust, where she led the psychodynamic team and developed a highly regarded honorary training scheme for psychotherapists. Martha teaches, supervises, and consults widely, including for Tavistock Relationships, the British Psychotherapy Foundation, and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Her clinical and research interests include women’s hormonal and reproductive health, solo motherhood by choice, infertility, and the integration of medical and psychological approaches in assisted conception and hormonal care. She has recently written a journal article on solo motherhood (in press) and contributed to the book "Couples as Parents," edited by Kate Thompson and Damian McCann. Martha maintains a full-time private practice in London and serves on the editorial board of "Couple and Family Psychoanalysis."

Liz Hamlin

Liz Hamlin is a Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council and is a member of the BPC’s Professional Standards Committee. She is Joint Head of Clinical Services at Tavistock Relationships having been a Visiting Clinician in the organisation for many years working with couples, supervising practitioners and delivering training. Liz has a special interest in working with couples and individuals facing divorce and separation and co-leads the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service at TR. She extended her initial training as a Couple Counsellor with East Kent Relate in the 1990’s through her involvement in setting up a service called Relateen for adolescents whose parents were going through divorce or separation. Liz has been an IAPT Couple Therapy for Depression Trainer and Supervisor having been involved in TR’s development of the training since its inception in 2010.

Kate Thompson

Kate Thompson, MA, Pg Dip, Couple Psych. is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist with over 25 years of experience working with couples and individuals. For the last 10 years she headed Tavistock Relationships’ (TR) Couple Therapy for Depression training in the NHS and adapted the model for perinatal services and to use with couples coping with substance misuse. Kate supervised TR’s Parenting Service for 9 years and co-edited/co-authored ‘Couples as Parents’ (Routledge 2024). Kate writes and lectures widely, in the UK and abroad. She co-edited ‘Engaging Couples: New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families’, (Routledge, 2018), and Couple and Family Psychoanalysis on Divorce and Separation, (Phoenix, 2021). Kate is co-Editor in Chief, Journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. Registered with the BPC and BACP, her private practice is in South West London.

Andrew Balfour

Andrew Balfour PhD is Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships. He originally trained as a clinical psychologist at University College London and then as an adult psychoanalytic 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 and conducting research, publishing numerous papers in the field and teaching widely both in Britain and abroad. He has co-edited two books How Couple Relationships Shape our World (edited by Andrew Balfour, Mary Morgan & Christopher Vincent, Routledge, 2012); Engaging Couples - New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families (edited by Andrew Balfour, Christopher Clulow, & Kate Thompson, Routledge, 2019) and his latest book is Life and Death: Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia and Other Fates of Time (Routledge, 2025).

Mary Morgan

Mary Morgan is a Psychoanalyst and Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Senior Fellow of Tavistock Relationships, Honorary Member of the Polish Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Consultant Member of the IPA Committee on couple and Family Psychoanalysis. She worked for more than 30 years at Tavistock Relationships, London, during which time she was the Reader in Couple Psychoanalysis and Head of the MA and Professional Doctorate in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.  She has a private analytic practice with individual and couples, supervises and teaches internationally. Her book: ‘A Couple State of Mind: Psychoanalysis of Couples – the Tavistock Relationships Model’ (2019) is available in English, Polish, Russian, Italian and Chinese. Her latest book ‘Couple Relations: A Contemporary Perspective’ is forthcoming. She is also co-editing with Julie Friend a book ‘Love, It's Meaning and Exploration in Couple therapy, to be published next year.

Alison Bruce

Alison Bruce, is a Child, Adolescent and Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. Alison trained in New York City at NYU (New York University) and subsequently at IPTAR (Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research). She worked for thirteen years at a Child Guidance Center in Brooklyn where she ran a parent infant group. On returning to London in 2015 she worked for five years in a West London CAMHS team and established a parent infant group in the local community, now in its seventh year.  She completed further psychoanalytic training in couples work at Tavistock Relationships where she was subsequently a visiting clinician. Alison has taught, supervised and been infant observation lead for Masters programs at New York and Birkbeck Universities as well as co-led work discussion groups on the parental couple for the Association of Child Psychotherapists. She is currently a seminar lead and tutor for The Tavistock and Portman Trust and is a Supervisor for the National Centre for the Supervision of Parent Infant relationships. She has an independent practice in West London.

Marian O’Connor

Marian O’Connor is a psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist and a psychosexual therapist. She is a former faculty member of TR where her roles included running the Msc in Psychosexual Therapy and the Department for Continuing Professional Development.

She continues to supervise at TR and has a private practice online and in central London. She has over 35 years experience in working with couples and individuals experiencing relationship and psychosexual issues.

Amita Sehgal

Amita Sehgal, PhD, is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist with almost 30 years of experience in the field of adult mental health. In her central London-based practice she works with adults, couples, and families. She also lectures and supervises nationally and internationally. Amita is widely published in the field of couple psychoanalysis. Her publications include articles, papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and an edited book, Sadism: Psychoanalytic Developmental Perspectives (published by Karnac-Routledge, 2018). Her latest book, Intimate Currencies: Understanding the Meaning of Money in Couple Relationships is currently in press (Karnac Books).