This book presents psychoanalytic thinking about the phenomenon of the couple and couple dynamics at different levels of organization: the "couple" in the individual's internal world, the dynamics between partners in a couple relationship, and the dynamics between the couple and the group.

Aleksandra Novakovic is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a psychoanalyst. She was a Joint Head of the Inpatient & Community Psychology Service and a consultant clinical psychologist in the Adult Mental Health Psychology Service. She taught on the couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy course at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, where she worked as a core member of staff and subsequently as a Visiting Lecturer. She is currently working in the NHS Complex Care Service. She co-edited with David Bell Living on the border: psychotic processes in the individual, the couple and the group (2013).

Introduction

1 Aggression, love, and the couple Otto F. Kernberg 9

2 Narcissistic problems in sharing space Ronald Britton 29

3 Couples and primitive processes R .D. Hinshelwood 43

4 Transference and enactment in the "oedipal setting"

of couple psychotherapy Andrew Balfour 59

5 The quarrelling couple: the couple's unconscious relations and enactments Aleksandra Novakovic 85

6 Couples becoming parents: a clinical example David Hewison 107

7 Couple and family dynamics and triangular space in group psychotherapy David Vincent 125

8 Oscillating images: perceptions of couples in organizations William Halton & Jenny Sprince 145

9 Belonging to a body larger than one's own: the pair in the group, the organization, and society Richard Morgan-Jones 165