Editorial

This issue begins with an article which explores Orna Guralnik's thoughts about the American TV programme Couples Therapy in which she is the lead couple psychotherapist. We have seen therapy sessions depicted on TV before, notably on In Treatment in which Gabriel Byrne played the part of an individual psychotherapist, mostly shown in his consulting room seeing patients, or in his own supervision. The difference with Couples Therapy, of course, is that this isn't fictional. The couples are real and Guralnik is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist practising in New York. It is for this reason that Guralnik likens the programme to documentary film making.

It is interesting for us to think about why therapy with couples is of interest to the viewing public now. We might say that the search for love and the obstacles to it have always been of interest. We see, after all, stories of love told in novels, pictured in films, and heartbreakingly captured in music.

But this is a programme which specifically shows couples being asked to explore their adult search for love or hopes for a creative relationship in the context of their childhood experience of feeling understood, loved, and/or neglected. It asks couples to look at how “ghosts” (Fraiberg et al., 1975) from their past pull them together and apart and it is focused on changing these relational dynamics.

In this way it shows the work couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists routinely do to help couples disentangle the knots which they can find themselves repeatedly caught up in.

It is a significant moment for psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy when the work we do reaches mainstream TV, and it seemed so obviously relevant to include Guralnik's thoughts and academic work in this journal. Guralnik is a public figure who is in demand and I was grateful to her for supporting the journal and speaking candidly with me about the fascinating and thorny issues which showing therapy on TV entails.

In our conversation we spoke about three b