Intimate Couple Relationships: a Secret Contract for Development and Defense

What brings two people into an intimate relationship are factors which may be largely unconscious, but which are significant in establishing and sustaining the partnership. In this presentation the speaker will explore these psychological processes which link the two people, resulting in what might be thought of as a ‘marital fit’ which carries the two individuals into a dynamic relationship created and existing between them.

1. Developing an understanding of the unconscious processes, alongside the conscious motivations, involved in two people establishing an intimate relationship.

2. Developing an understanding of the projective and introjective processes which are formative in any and every encounter between two (or more) people and especially powerful in the establishment of an intimate couple relationship.

3. Developing an understanding that every intimate couple relationship has within it the potential for emotional growth and development and the inevitability of defensiveness and psychological avoidance and shelter.