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Reviews of books on family and couple psychoanalysis do not often grace the pages of JAPA, nor, with a few notable exceptions (Kernberg 1998), do articles about its practice. That's unfortunate. In these days of widespread attacks on psychoanalysis in general, this modality of practice, which in the minds of many of us represents a completely analytic approach, offers a way of working that is both effective and more readily understood by patients and the public than individual intensive psycho-analysis. It not only allows us to offer a different way of working that is more adapted to the needs of some (certainly not all) patients and their families, but it presents opportunities for therapeutic leverage not available in the practice of individual analysis.
By way of full disclosure, let me say that my interest in family and couple psychoanalysis dates back almost as far as my interest in psycho-analysis itself. Fortunately, then, back in the 1960s, there were no forms of family therapy other than ones derived from analytic centers, from the work of John Bowlby, Nathan Ackerman, and others who felt that psychoanalysis was missing the boat by not understanding and working with families. Their work with families proceeded from an essentially analytic perspective. By the time family systems and strategic therapies diverged