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This book seeks to address what is identified as “a vacuum in contemporary psychoanalysis devoid of a comprehensively relational way to think about psychoanalytically oriented couples treatment.” Aimed at practitioners of couples therapy as well as psychoanalytic practitioners, it is also intended for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, marriage and family therapy, and social work. In this sense Ringstrom is attempting to cover much ground by addressing a varied range of professionals and students, describing a theoretical approach grounded in clinical work relevant to a wide audience.
I am approaching this review as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist here in the United Kingdom where object relations, the independent group, and attachment theory inform clinical practice. For readers unfamiliar with the field of couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy, this has been led for almost 70 years by the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships (TCCR) in London. Alongside its rich canon of psychoanalytic theories of the couple relationship, trainings, research, and clinical work (Clulow, 2002; Grier, 2001; Ludlam & Nyberg, 2007; Ruszczynski, 1993; Ruszczynski & Fisher, 1995), TCCR has also developed several models of treatment for very challenging populations which integrate other psychological paradigms with psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy (Hertzmann, Abse, Target, Glausius, & Nyberg, in press; Nyberg & Hertzmann, 2014; Target, Hertzmann, Midgley, & Casey, 2015). So it is within this context that my thoughts about this book are set out.
As I understand it, one of the distinct aspects of relational psychoanalysis is that it explicitly focuses on a person's relationships with other people and in this sense one might say, is well suited to the treatment of couples. The book is set out in six stages of treatment, which the author describes as nonlinear, nonhierarchical steps. Ringstrom emphasizes that the approach to treatmen