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At the heart of Dr. Giuseppe Civitarese’s work is the idea that psychological life in therapy isn’t contained in one person or the other, but emerges in a shared, co-created field. For couple therapists, this maps almost directly onto clinical work where patterns, emotions, and conflicts often don’t “belong” to either partner alone but arise between them.
A few reasons this is particularly relevant for couple therapy:
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Through this presentation, Levit skilfully demonstrates how to draw upon approaches from the somatic trauma therapies and interweave them into psychoanalytic treatment. He is not suggesting that we replace or even supplement our psychoanalytic forms of provision. Rather, he will illustrate how interweaving approaches from somatic trauma therapies can enhance our capacities to offer that which we offer psychoanalytically, namely, being with and bearing what patients cannot bear, and providing much needed holding and containment.
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How do hormonal changes shape our emotional lives and how are these experiences taken up within intimate relationships?
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This article invites male psychotherapists to join the conversation at our upcoming Women’s Mental Health conference. It draws on Dr Letticia Banton’s phenomenological research exploring female clients’ experiences of menstruality in therapy with male therapists.
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Drawing on her doctoral research into women’s experiences of menstruality in psychotherapy with male therapists, this article asks what happens when the cyclical body finally enters the therapy room.
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(There is) a view of menopause as catastrophe”…. “If women on the youthful side of the climacteric could glimpse what this state of peaceful potency might be, the difficulty of the transition would be lessened”
Greer 1991
The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) has published its first ever position statement on menopause and mental health. In this article Dr Rachel Gibbons makes a please for a more holistic approach.
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‘Menstruality,’ the full spectrum of the female hormonal lifecycle, including menarche, menstruation, menopause and post-menopause, has historically been overlooked in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This reflects thousands of years of misogyny and marginalisation of female life within our society. Yet a growing body of contemporary feminist work in therapeutic practice and research suggests that recognising menstruality can deepen our understanding of clients’ emotional, relational and embodied life worlds. Hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle influence psychic life, including thought patterns, mood, dreams, emotional regulation, desire and so much more. For some clients, hormonal fluctuations may intensify vulnerability or distress at particular phases of the cycle. When therapists recognise these patterns, experiences that might otherwise be pathologised or dismissed can instead be contextualised and understood within an embodied psychotherapeutic framework.
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For decades, psychoanalytic thinking has largely avoided sustained engagement with the menstrual cycle.
This avoidance is historically understandable. Early psychoanalytic formulations positioned the female body as a site of deficit and regression, and feminist critiques rightly challenged the ways in which biology was used to justify misogynistic assumptions. In response, the field shifted toward privileging intrapsychic and relational meanings, often at the expense of the body itself.
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“She was guided by the principle that psychoanalysis involved a respect for truth but she was also kind. Truth without kindness is not really true, but we can add that kindness without truth is not really kind.”
John Steiner, reflecting on his experience as an analysand of Hanna Segal.
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The majority of psychotherapists experience profound loneliness at some point in their professional lives, often accompanied by emotional strain or even symptoms that resemble the very mental health challenges we help our clients navigate. Yet this reality is rarely spoken about openly. We spend so much of our time and energy comforting other people’s pain that we often forget that we, too, need comfort and connection. We become highly skilled at holding space for others while quietly neglecting the emotional space we ourselves require.
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In clinical work with couples, few dynamics are as powerful, or as destabilising, as the oscillation between longing for merger and fearing engulfment, alongside the equally potent terror of separation and abandonment. Many therapists will recognise the exhausting psychic motion this creates in the consulting room: partners pulled towards one another in desperate need, only to recoil in panic when closeness feels annihilating.
An upcoming TR Together seminar led by Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapist Kate Thompson takes this dynamic as its focus, drawing on two influential psychoanalytic texts: Rey’s exploration of the schizoid mode of being and Steiner’s formulation of psychic retreats and pathological organisations. Both offer profound insight into how patients defend against primitive anxieties and how these defences become organised structures within the personality.