This book is about the importance of the couple relationship in the broadest terms. It draws on clinical researches into the inner lived world of adult couples, empirical developmental research into children and parenting, as well as the legal setting when relationships break down. It bridges the inner and outer worlds, showing how our most intimate relationships have vital importance at all levels, from the individual and the family, to the social setting - and explores the implications for practice and policy. Above all, it is a book about applications of clinical thinking linked with...

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...