How Couple Relationships Shape our World

Andrew Balfour is director of clinical services at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships. He originally studied English Literature before going on to train as a clinical psychologist at University College London and then as an adult psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, and as a couple psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships (TCCR). He worked for many years in the adult department of the Tavistock Clinic where he specialised in old age and he has also been a staff member at TCCR since 2001. He has published a number of papers and has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. Mary Morgan is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She has worked at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships for over twenty years, where she currently holds the readership in couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She is 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. Christopher Vincent is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. He was formerly a senior staff member and is now a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships where he developed a research and clinical interest in couples who are divorcing. His current clinical practice is combined with a research project looking at the impact of a diagnosis of early onset dementia on couple relationships.

INTRODUCTION How couple relationships shape our world: clinical practice, research and policy perspectives CHAPTER ONE Prevention: intervening with couples at challenging family transition points by Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip A. Cowan COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER ONE by Leezah Hertzmann CHAPTER TWO Parents as partners: how the parental relationship affects children's psychological development by Gordon T. Harold and Leslie D. Leve COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER TWO by Susanna Abse CHAPTER THREE How couple therapists work with parenting issues by Mary Morgan COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER THREE by Lynne Cudmore CHAPTER FOUR The role of the family court system of England and Wales in child-related parental disputes: towards a new concept of the family justice process by Mervyn Murch COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER FOUR by Christopher Clulow CHAPTER FIVE Working therapeutically with high conflict divorce by Avi Shmueli COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER FIVE by Christopher Vincent CHAPTER SIX Depression, couple therapy, research, and government policy by Julian Leff, Eia Asen, and Felix Schwarzenbach COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER SIX by Christopher Clulow CHAPTER SEVEN Approaches to researching the evidence: an exploration of TCCR's research into couple relationships and couple therapy, past and present by David Hewison COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER SEVEN by Michael Rustin CHAPTER EIGHT Couple therapy - social engineering or psychological treatment? by Andrew Balfour COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER EIGHT by Philip Stokoe CHAPTER NINE Her Majesty's department of love? The state and support for couple and family relationships by Honor Rhodes COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER NINE by Janet Walker CHAPTER TEN Supervision: the interdependence of professional experience and organisational accountability by Lynette Hughes and Felicia Olney COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER TEN by David Lawlor