Couple Relations: A Contemporary Introduction
Part of Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : August 2025
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 146
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98191
- ISBN 13 : 9781032398341
- ISBN 10 : 1032398345
Also by Mary Morgan
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In this book, Mary Morgan provides a comprehensive overview understanding of couple relations.
Taking a psychoanalytic perspective, Morgan explores some of the fundamental tensions in being part of a couple: between being an individual and a couple, relating, non-relating, and the narcissistic problem in tolerating the otherness and alienness of one’s partner. She guides the reader through managing feelings of both separateness and intimacy, issues around sex and sexuality, the tension between love and hate, and the importance of curiosity. She also elucidates key discoveries of unconscious processes in a couple relationship made by couple psychoanalysts, including unconscious choice of partner, the couple projective system, shared unconscious phantasy and beliefs, unconscious alliances, the couple’s own transference relationship and how the real ‘presence’ of an other is seen as an ‘interference’ acting on the preconceptions of the other subject.
Through Morgan’s accessible and holistic approach, drawing on decades of clinical experience, this book is an essential resource for all psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapists, counsellors working with couples, and researchers and students in Gender Studies, social sciences, psychology and the humanities.
Reviews and Endorsements
Mary Morgan draws on her immense clinical experience, her warmth and her intellectual depth to explore the interplay of desire, gender, and sexuality within the ever-present tension between togetherness and separateness. She shows how early experiences shape our ability to connect, how a couple’s shared unconscious phantasies, defenses, and beliefs both bind and challenge them, and how, in the context of curiosity about one another, love and hate can fuel creativity and result in mature, evolving relationships. This is a valuable resource for clinicians, scholars, and anyone seeking deeper insight into the transformative potential of love.
Harriet L. Wolfe, M.D., International Psychoanalytical Association
Mary Morgan’s is the most important voice in the development of psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy and, in this book, she takes us into new territory. With a gift for treating complex ideas with a lightness of touch, whilst rendering their depth and importance, Morgan has given us the definitive introductory text. But this book is more than that. It is an invaluable guide, taking a developmental perspective on the discipline itself, tracing, remarkably succinctly, the history of analytic thinking in this area. And then, most brilliantly of all, Morgan draws links between object relations approaches, which are dominant in the UK and US, and theoretical approaches which have grown up in France and South America. In this way, giving an unequalled international perspective on Couple Psychoanalysis. A definitive text for our times, and a perfect companion for Morgan’s first book, A Couple State of Mind: Psychoanalysis of Couples and the Tavistock Relationships Model. Together, they are must-reads for all of us working in the field.
Andrew Balfour PhD, Chief Executive at Tavistock Relationships
‘Mary Morgan is one of the most influential exponents of the British model of psychoanalysis of couples and a deep and effective clinician. Also on the basis of a solid training as an individual psychoanalyst, Mary Morgan dialogues with the most important approaches that characterise this field throughout the world and in a lucid and coherent manner takes up and develops her findings such as that of the mental state of the couple. This book proves to be very useful because it illustrates in an original way the historical foundations of the conjugal link with its characteristics of unity and separateness, but also looks at the most current developments of the couple and the different forms of sexuality.
Anna Maria Nicolò MD, Child neuropsychiatrist and President of International Association for Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (IACFP)
A characteristic of an expert in her field is the ability convey highly complex ideas in an accessible way. In writing this book Mary Morgan has once again demonstrated her ability to do this by achieving the herculean goal of describing succinctly, yet fully and helpfully, the two major theoretical frameworks in couple and family psychoanalysis: Object Relations and Link Theory. She persuasively argues how these two approaches can be integrated and lead to a deeper understanding of the intrapsychic and interpsychic dimensions of a couple relationship. She describes how in a couple when difference can be tolerated and the power of curiosity (or the epistemophilic instinct) freed, it can facilitate the emergence of a couple state of mind. In the same way she shows how the coupling of the two main theoretical approaches can result in a new and creative approach to couple work. Moreover, in demonstrating the efficacy of her ideas with clinical cases, she also powerfully demonstrates the value of couple psychoanalysis with the contemporary problems with which couples present, especially in relation to sexual problems and issues related to sexuality. With all this achieved I believe she highlights once again that she has become a doyen of our profession. For all these reasons I believe this book is essential reading for all who wish to grasp the fundamentals of couple psychoanalysis or to deepen their understanding of the latest advances in the field.
Timothy Keogh, Associate Professor, University of Sydney, Co-Chair, International Psychoanalytical Association Committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (COFAP) and Former English Vice-President, International Association for Couple and family Psychoanalysis (IACFP)
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. An Overview of the Field
2. The Intrapsychic and the Individual within a Relationship
3. The Interpersonal
Part 1: Unconscious Choice of Partner, a Couple Projective System, Interference and Uncertainty
4. The Interpersonal
Part 2: Shared Unconscious Phantasy and Beliefs, Unconscious Alliances and Curiosity
5. The Interpersonal
Part 3: Narcissism & Alterity
6. The Couple Relationship as a Third
7. Sex and Sexuality in Couple Relations
8. Love, Hate and Creativity
About the Author(s)
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.
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