How Couple Relationships Shape our World

This book is about the importance of the couple relationship in the broadest terms. It draws on clinical researches into the inner lived world of adult couples, empirical developmental research into children and parenting, as well as the legal setting when relationships break down. It aims to bridge the inner and outer worlds, showing how our most intimate relationships have vital importance at all levels, from the individual and the family, to the social setting - and explores the implications for practice and policy. Above all, it is a book about applications of clinical thinking linked with research knowledge, as tools for front line workers and policy makers alike. It draws on the tradition of applied clinical thinking and research of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, linking current thinking with the history of ideas in each area it covers, as well as considering implications for the future.

Andrew Balfour

INTRODUCTION How couple relationships shape our world: clinical practice, research and policy perspectives CHAPTER ONE Prevention: intervening with couples at challenging family transition points by Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip A. Cowan COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER ONE by Leezah Hertzmann CHAPTER TWO Parents as partners: how the parental relationship affects children's psychological development by Gordon T. Harold and Leslie D. Leve COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER TWO by Susanna Abse CHAPTER THREE How couple therapists work with parenting issues by Mary Morgan COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER THREE by Lynne Cudmore CHAPTER FOUR The role of the family court system of England and Wales in child-related parental disputes: towards a new concept of the family justice process by Mervyn Murch COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER FOUR by Christopher Clulow CHAPTER FIVE Working therapeutically with high conflict divorce by Avi Shmueli COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER FIVE by Christopher Vincent CHAPTER SIX Depression, couple therapy, research, and government policy by Julian Leff, Eia Asen, and Felix Schwarzenbach COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER SIX by Christopher Clulow CHAPTER SEVEN Approaches to researching the evidence: an exploration of TCCR's research into couple relationships and couple therapy, past and present by David Hewison COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER SEVEN by Michael Rustin CHAPTER EIGHT Couple therapy - social engineering or psychological treatment? by Andrew Balfour COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER EIGHT by Philip Stokoe CHAPTER NINE Her Majesty's department of love? The state and support for couple and family relationships by Honor Rhodes COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER NINE by Janet Walker CHAPTER TEN Supervision: the interdependence of professional experience and organisational accountability by Lynette Hughes and Felicia Olney COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER TEN by David Lawlor