The couple relationship is at the centre of this book. The complex nature of the couple attachment is emphasised, drawing both on psychoanalytic concepts and on attachment theory. The chapters aim to ...integrate theory with practice and can be seen, both separately and together, as offering new insights into the intricate web of psychic fantasies, shared unconscious anxieties and external realities that shape the attachment between the couple.
Making Spaces Cullen, Kate; Bondi, Professor Liz; Fewell, Judith ...
2014, 20180501, 2018-05-01
eBook
This book argues for the value and application of psychoanalytic thinking beyond, as well as within, the consulting room. Inspired by a Scottish psychoanalytic tradition that owes much to W.R.D. ...Fairbairn and J.D. Sutherland, the Scottish Institute of Human Relations has provided a valuable reference point for the work described in the book. It illustrates how the coming together of human beings into a shared space fosters opportunities to create loving, collaborative relationships in which to work and from which to grow. The book's first section explores how psychoanalytic thinking developed in Scotland, while section two focuses on work with children, families and couples, showing how psychoanalytic perspectives can be used to strengthen capacities for loving relationships. The chapters in section three show how psychoanalysis can be applied in such varied settings as psycho-social research, education, institutional development and organisational consultancy. The fourth section pursues this theme further, considering the potential of psychoanalytic concepts to enhance work in religious ministry, in medical and psychiatric services, and in understanding the processes of ageing.
Couple psychotherapy and psychotherapy with parents, in parallel with psychotherapy for their child, are well-developed modes of addressing relationship difficulties which trouble families. How does ...the therapeutic agency called to respond to a family crisis choose the most appropriate intervention to offer the adult family members? This paper seeks to compare and contrast the complementary, but different, approaches offered by addressing the parental couple as parents, and focusing on their couple relationship. Exploring the relationship between the two approaches, the paper proposes that teams should seek to offer both, and endorses the view that all intervention is much enhanced by the therapist's capacity for a "creative couple state of mind". These issues are illustrated by a description of work with parents of an adopted child whose placement with them was at risk of breaking down.
This chapter focuses on the impact of perinatal depression on relationships in families and especially on couple relationships. It explains the Murray Leishman lends urgency to calls for routine ...screening and parenting support for perinatally depressed mothers. Insecure attachment to mothers during infancy, marital conflict and further maternal depression, extending beyond the perinatal period, were also correlated with offsprings' experience of lifetime depression. One of the main imperatives, therefore, that parenthood demands is to clear the hurdles thrown up by oedipal conflict. Reflection in anticipation of parenthood allows both a reconnection with parents and the kind of separation that might allow a different dependency to evolve, so that there can be recognition and a further affirmation of the new parent as adult. In the short space of time between Richard and Jane's heady romance and coming for couple therapy-barely three years-the outlook for the family appeared challenging.
This chapter explores the first application of W. F. D. Fairbairn's ideas to understanding couple relationships, as set out by Henry Dicks, in his classic text Marital Tensions. It summarises Dicks's ...thinking in relation to Fairbairnian concepts. Although Dicks clearly speaks with authority, and "knows his stuff", he presents his ideas and case examples as a study with the scientific aim of testing the validity of two hypotheses. Dicks moreover feels that Fairbairn's schema particularly fits his hypotheses in helping to understand the "dynamics of idealization" on which the hypotheses are based. Dicks sees marriage as a "social relationship", and considers that the sociological concepts of "role performance" and "culture patterns" complement his object relations perspective. Dicks had prepared the ground of his argument by recounting Fairbairn's theories of the infant's defensive manoeuvres to deal with unrequited love, by withdrawing part of the self into a split-off enclave—the libidinal ego.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the development of psychoanalysis in Scotland and the ancestry of the ...Scottish Institute of Human Relations (SIHR). It seeks to make more widely available aspects of the unique thinking and practice that it fostered. The book is concerned with the creation of spaces for psychoanalytic thinking. It shows that relationship-based practice is at last poised to make a comeback in the field of social work practice. The book explores potentially productive parallels between psychoanalytic ideas and contributions to research about teaching and learning in higher education. It discusses psychoanalytic thinking to foster the growth of a group of experienced clinical psychologists working in NHS settings. Like other psychoanalytic institutions, the SIHR had to create a space capable of fostering the inherent outsiderness of psychoanalysis.
This chapter attempts to delineate a "psychodynamic image of the couple", drawing inspiration from J. Sutherland's case for envisioning a "The psychodynamic image of man". Such an image would reflect ...both an outer and an inner life, along with the emotional forces that move continually between them, as well as between the past and the present. Attachment to an inner couple object, after all, leaves us with an unconscious propensity to form relationships that recreate significant early conflictual relationships. The chapter considers the development of a sense of couple identity and the relatedness of such an identity with an internal couple object; and further, the relatedness of the couple in the couple's mind with the concept of a couple ego, as O. F. Kernberg proposes, with its own superego and ego ideal. Sutherland's concept of a psychodynamic image may help couples and couple psychotherapists to appreciate fully the impact felt when the couple ego ideal is lost or irrevocably changed.
The practice of breast feeding has declined throughout the world, at first in the developed countries and now also in the developing countries. Although there is some return to breast feeding in ...industrialized countries, it is mostly by the privileged and better educated women. This article discusses the importance of breast feeding: protection of children from infection and allergy; increase of the interval between births; inadequate safeguards to the marketing of breast milk substitutes, particularly in developing countries. The factors which contribute to successful breast feeding are reviewed: self confidence and good emotional and social support; unscheduled and frequent feeding; education and promotion of the benefits of breast feeding, at national and local level, with health workers and lay organizations working together.
How physical activity (PA) and sitting time may change after first myocardial infarction (MI) and the association with mortality in postmenopausal women is unknown.
Participants included ...postmenopausal women in the Women's Health Initiative-Observational Study, aged 50 to 79 years who experienced a clinical MI during the study. This analysis included 856 women who had adequate data on PA exposure and 533 women for sitting time exposures. Sitting time was self-reported at baseline, year 3, and year 6. Self-reported PA was reported at baseline through year 8. Change in PA and sitting time were calculated as the difference between the cumulative average immediately following MI and the cumulative average immediately preceding MI. The 4 categories of change were: maintained low, decreased, increased, and maintained high. The cut points were ≥7.5 metabolic equivalent of task hours/week versus <7.5 metabolic equivalent of task hours/week for PA and ≥8 h/day versus <8 h/day for sitting time. Cox proportional hazard models estimated hazard ratios and 95% CIs for all-cause, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular disease mortality. Compared with women who maintained low PA (referent), the risk of all-cause mortality was: 0.54 (0.34-0.86) for increased PA and 0.52 (0.36-0.73) for maintained high PA. Women who had pre-MI levels of sitting time <8 h/day, every 1 h/day increase in sitting time was associated with a 9% increased risk (hazard ratio=1.09, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.19) of all-cause mortality.
Meeting the recommended PA guidelines pre- and post-MI may have a protective role against mortality in postmenopausal women.
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