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One way to characterize recent developments in psychoanalysis is to see them as an expansion of focus—from the conflict-laden products of an isolated mind to the complex interactions of two differently organized subjectivities; from mental apparatus to dynamic, context-dependent systems. In keeping with this expansion, Aron and Starr’s (2013) recent A Psychotherapy for the People does much to deconstruct the artificial barriers that separate psychoanalysis from other therapies, or from the political contexts of the world in which we live.
Despite this breaking of barriers and expansion of focus, one aspect of psychoanalytic culture seems resistant to change. Psychoanalytic treatment is explicitly or implicitly considered to be an activity that takes place between one therapist and one patient. Treatment of couples, families, groups or community-based interventions are all relegated to “applied psychoanalysis,” or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Carla Leone’s (2013) recent article, The Invisible Spouse has detailed some of the pitfalls and perils to patients and their partners that can arise from the privileging of individual psychotherapy over couples work.
Even the titles of psychoanalytic couples therapy books, including my own (Shaddock, 2000), pay homage to this distinction by including the word “approach”—as in Phillip Ringstrom’s (2014) important new contribution, A Relational Approach to
Couples Psychotherapy. Certainly there is plenty here for the reader looking for practical help with couples, including a careful restatement and exploration of Dr. Ringstrom’s (1994) six-step approach to couples work. But Ringstrom’s book goes beyond a mere application of relational psychoanalysis to couples therapy. Hidden between the covers we find some of the most innovative and integrating psychoanalytic theory-making of recent years.
Ringstrom, following Kohut’s (1984) assertion that selfobject needs evolve throughout the adult lifespan, has created a theory of adult devel