Join our community
Receive the TR Together newsletters.
Featured Events
Neurobiology
Friday, May 10, 2024
Karnac Author series
With Janice Hiller
Psychoanalysis
Saturday, October 5, 2024
With Nancy McWilliams, PhD & ABPP
CPD Credits
5
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Not Recorded
Time
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Standard
£200.00
Trainee/NHS
£170.00
Monday, March 4, 2024 - Monday, March 25, 2024
Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
A Five Week Discussion Series
With Stanley Ruszczynski, Katherine Astill, Dr Avi Shmueli, Alison Bruce, Andrew Balfour & Elle Sidel (Chair)
This series of five online seminars offers an opportunity for psychotherapists working with individuals, children, adolescents or groups to learn more about couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy as developed and practised at Tavistock Relationships over 75 years as well as for couple therapists to develop their theoretical understanding.
Seminars will be led by experienced couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and will offer a mix of theory and clinical vignettes. There will be the opportunity for discussion in the group, and to develop connections with colleagues working in the field, allowing space for participants to develop their own thinking and engagement with the theory.
The programme will give consideration to key couple psychoanalytic concepts, as well as to clinical technique. It will cover periods in the life cycle that can bring couples into therapy, including parenthood, and challenges such as ageing and illness which can powerfully rekindle the earliest anxieties.
The series will act as a taster for Tavistock Relationships’ Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy clinical qualification, which is being developed so that it can be offered from September 2024 as a hybrid course; online and in person.
Programme
26 February 2024, 17.00 - 18.00 (UK)
Stanley Ruszczynski
The Why and the How of a Clinical Encounter
In this seminar, Stanley Ruszczynski will read through a clinical illustration of a couple in treatment, and will describe how he thinks about and understands the likely impact of their histories on their psycho-social development. This will include a developmental or psychoanalytic understanding of psychic growth. He will also discuss how he thinks about the clinical technique he employs in working with this couple, including ideas around transference, countertransference, projection and projective identification.
17.20 Group Discussion
18.00 End
4 March 2024, 17.00 - 18.00 GMT
Avi Shmueli – The Unconscious, the Conscious and the External World
Couples presenting for therapy often grapple with the contradiction of a problem which has befallen them but equally has an unexpected and profound hold. The psychoanalytic model of the mind enables an understanding of how the conscious, unconscious and external worlds simultaneously present themselves. Psychoanalytic training allows the therapist to work with this seamless coexistence and show the developmental heart of the couple. Avi Shmueli will show how therapeutic work allows the couple to more consciously determine their own direction, even if this may lead to separation and possibly divorce.
17.20 Group Discussion
18.00 End
11 March 2024, 17.00 - 18.00 GMT
Katherine Astill – Creativity in Couple Relationships: Two Views
There is a consensus in psychoanalytic couple theory that a satisfying, intimate and loving couple relationship is a creative relationship. However, the developmental origin and the place of creativity in psychic life are contested. Katherine Astill will describe two distinct, sometimes opposing, strands of psychoanalytic thinking about creativity in couple relationships, one deriving from Klein and the other from Winnicott. Mary Morgan’s concept of the creative couple draws on a post-Kleinian view, in which creativity is an outcome of Oedipal development. More recently, David Hewison has revived and developed ideas about creativity in the Independent tradition, focussing on Winnicott’s concept of primary creativity, and its elaboration by Christopher Bollas. This seminar will consider fruitful points of contact and difference between these two approaches to creative relating, and some implications for technique in couple therapy.
17.20 Group Discussion
18.00 End
18 March 2024, 17.00 - 18.00
Alison Bruce - When Two Becomes Three, Four and More: Challenges in Working with the Parental Couple
This seminar will consider some of the challenges that arise in working with couples who are also parents. A new baby can reignite old Oedipal conflicts in the internal world of the parents, parenting issues can become the platform on to which unconsciously held beliefs play out, children can become vessels for unconsciously projected disavowed emotions or the family scene the drama for unconsciously repeated inter-generational trauma. Application of some of the theory developed by teachers and clinicians at Tavistock Relationships over the past 75 years can help to deepen and facilitate the work with couples who bring their children with them, metaphorically speaking, into the consulting room.
17.20 Group Discussion
18.00 End
25 March 2024, 17.00 - 18.00
Andrew Balfour – Developmental Challenges for the Couple in Later Life
In this seminar, Andrew Balfour will explore some of the challenges of ageing and of working with clients who are facing death. As is often remarked, it is powerfully the case that in our end is our beginning – as the anxieties of our earliest lives may be powerfully rekindled by the vulnerability and prospect of dependence on others that the end of life can bring. This seminar will focus on the impact of illness, such as dementia, and other possible fates of late life, on our relationships.
17.20 Group Discussion
18.00 End
Avi Shmueli
Dr Avi Shmueli is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Having originally trained as a clinical psychologist, he worked in the NHS, Tavistock Relationships, and the Anna Freud Centre. He currently works in private practice, supervises the work of the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service at Tavistock Relationships and teaches at the Psychoanalysis Unit of University College London.
Katherine Astill
Katherine Astill is a psychoanalytic couple therapist and a psychodynamic psychotherapist. She works in private practice, and teaches and supervises at Tavistock Relationships.
Alison Bruce
Alison Bruce is a couple, child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She has worked clinically in both public and private sectors in New York City and London. She has been a visiting clinician at Tavistock Relationships and has taught and supervised for NYU, IPTAR and Birkbeck Universities. She is currently a seminar leader for the Tavistock and Portman Trust, has an independent practice and runs a parent/ infant group project in White City.
Andrew Balfour
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).
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).
Elle Sidel
Elle Sidel is a couple psychoanalytic and individual psychodynamic psychotherapist. She is a Tavistock Relationships faculty staff member and programme lead for the Psychodynamic Training as well as seminar leader, supervisor and tutor. An experienced Visiting Clinician at TR’s Clinical Services, she maintains a private practice in London. She is the current head of the Tavistock Relationships Association of Psychotherapists and Counsellors (TRAPC).
- Psychotherapists
- Couple and Family Psychotherapists
- Psychoanalysts
- Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists
Stanley Ruszczynski
- To understand the effects of personal history on psycho-social development.
- To consider clinical decisions around technique.
Avi Shmueli
- To develop an understanding of unconscious process and the intersection of conscious, unconscious and external.
- To consider the possibilities of separation or divorce.
Katherine Astill
- To consider two theoretical approaches to the idea of creativity in couple relationships.
- To reflect on clinical technique.
Alison Bruce
- To understand the ways in which children can become caught up in parental difficulties.
- To move from a parenting approach to one that puts the couple’s conscious and unconscious system centre stage.
Andrew Balfour
- To consider the way in which end of life anxieties can be a rekindling of our earliest anxieties.
- To consider particular approaches when working with clients at the end of life.
Standard: £200
Trainee/NHS/Subscriber: £170
Group Rates (for 4 or more): Contact makeritafaumui@trtogether.com for customised pricing.
Trainee discount: To qualify for this offer you need to be taking a course which provides core practitioner training in counselling or psychotherapy that is at least 1 year full time or two years part time and recognised by the BACP or UKCP. TR Together reserve the right to ask to see evidence of training being undertaken.
Alumni: If you are a TR Alumni (TRAPC member) please email anitabruz@tavistockrelationships.org for a discount code to add at checkout
This series is not being recorded.
Your CPD certificate will be available to download from your TR Together account 48 hours after the event.
Upcoming Events
Neurobiology
Friday, May 10, 2024
Karnac Author series
With Janice Hiller
In the Consulting Room
Friday, May 17, 2024
Forgiving and Being Forgiven
With Francis Grier & Aleksandra Novakovic
Trauma
Friday, June 14, 2024
Theoretical and Clinical Insights