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The Psychoanalytic Couples Psychotherapy Group (PCPG) and the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology co-hosted Francis Grier, until recently a Clinical Lecturer and Visiting Research Lecturer at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, on October 23, 2010 in Berkeley, California. This was the third annual lecture on psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy that we have organised and, like our two previous events, when we presented James Fisher and Mary Morgan, the day with Francis Grier was attended by approximately 120 registrants.
Francis Grier's paper was interesting and clinically useful, and took as its focus couples whose dynamics and profound anxieties about development make it extremely hard for them to make use of psychotherapy. Specifically, his paper discussed couples with an extreme paranoid—schizoid frame of mind, bordering on psychotic functioning. Within this framework, he described the formation of this type of couple's ideals and the betrayal of those ideals, as well as how the couple's experience of time fundamentally affects their psychological functioning. He presented clinical material highlighting differences in working with couples with an anti-developmental, near-psychotic level of functioning, versus those who use their psychotherapy to develop healthier relationships. Julie Friend, LCSW, discussed his paper, and a clinical case of couple psychotherapy was presented by Dr Leora Benioff to Francis Grier for his commentary. A lively and thought-provoking discussion occurred with the audience at the end of the day.