Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Couple Relations
CPD Credits
1
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Not Recorded
Time (UK)
6:00 pm - 7:15 pm
Standard
N/A
Trainee/NHS
£0.00
Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Couple Relations
Thursday, January 29, 2026

Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Couple Relations

Couple Relations

With Mary Morgan & Aner Govrin

This free series offers open and reflective dialogues with authors from the Routledge Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis collection. Each session invites participants to explore how contemporary psychoanalytic ideas are evolving across theory and practice. Rather than formal lectures, these conversations create a space for curiosity, exchange, and shared thinking where ideas unfold through dialogue between authors, editors, and participants.

Our first session is with Mary Morgan and Aner Govrin, editor of the Routledge series. In this dialogue, Aner invites Mary to reflect on how her book Couple Relations: A Contemporary Introduction both consolidates and extends the field of psychoanalytic couple theory.

Building on the rich traditions of British object relations and couple psychoanalysis, Mary re-examines the couple relationship as a dynamic emotional system, rather than merely the interaction of two individuals. Drawing on aspects of Link theory, she illuminates the link itself, the living connection between partners, as the primary site of psychic activity. This perspective opens new ways of understanding how unconscious phantasy, projection, and mutual influence shape intimacy, conflict, and repair.

The conversation will explore how this theoretical evolution affects clinical practice: how therapists can attend to the shared psychic field of the couple, the interplay of love and hate, and the creative potential that emerges when partners tolerate difference and otherness.

Participants are warmly encouraged to engage throughout via the Q&A function, sharing reflections, asking questions, and contributing to the evolving conversation. This is a space to listen, think aloud, and participate in an active exchange of ideas.

 

Programme

18.00 Mary Morgan and Aner Govrin in Conversation

Join Mary Morgan and Aner Govrin for an open, unstructured conversation. Rather than a formal presentation, this session will be guided by curiosity, spontaneity, and dialogue. Aner will facilitate the discussion, but the direction will be shaped by the flow of ideas and questions as they arise.

Participants are warmly encouraged to engage throughout via the Q&A function, sharing reflections, asking questions, and contributing to the evolving conversation. This is a space to listen, think aloud, and participate in an active exchange of perspectives.

19.15 End

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.

Aner Govrin

Aner Govrin is a psychoanalyst, philosopher and clinical psychologist based in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the director of the doctoral track, 'Psychoanalysis and Hermeneutics', at Bar-Ilan University and is a member of Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is the series editor of the Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis book series, author of How Philosophy Changed Psychoanalysis (2024), Ethics and Attachment (2018), Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted (2015), and Conversations with Michael Eigen (2003). He is also editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (2024) and Innovations in Psychoanalysis (2019). His two forthcoming book, Interpretation - A Contemporary Intrioduction and The Craft of the Psychodynamic Case Study: A Practical Guide, will be published by Routledge.

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