Instructors
Vivian Eskin, Ph.D.
Vivian Eskin, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst (Adult) at the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) and a graduate of the CFS/IPTAR Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program, N.Y. N.Y. She holds a Qualifying Diploma in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Tavistock Relationships, London, UK. Dr. Eskin is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, NASW (National Association for Social Work), APA (American Psychological Association), CIPS (Confederation of Psychoanalytic Societies) and the British Society for Couple Psychotherapists. She teaches at various training institutes and graduate programs in New York City, provides Clinical Supervision and has an active private practice in individual and couple psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. She is a member of the teaching faculty of the Contemporary Freudian Society and the Contemporary Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Program of New York.
Below, please find a selection of Dr. Eskin’s published works.
Prof. Rachel Blass
Rachel B. Blass is a member and Training Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and formerly a professor of psychoanalysis in leading universities both in the UK and in Israel. She is also on the Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis where she is the editor of the Controversies section. She has published a book and over 80 articles which elucidate the foundations of psychoanalysis and their role in contemporary analytic thinking and practice, offer close readings of Freud’s texts and the evolution of his ideas, and clarify how Kleinian psychoanalysis grounds and advances these ideas. In recent years a special focus of her writing and teaching has been on making what is unique to London Kleinian thinking and practice more accessible to analysts from other traditions. She has lectured, taught and offered clinical seminars in many countries and her writings have been translated into 15 languages.
Mary Morgan
Mary Morgan is a Psychoanalyst and Consultant Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Senior Fellow of Tavistock Relations an Honorary Member of the Polish Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She worked for many years at Tavistock Relationships and was Head of the MA and Professional Doctorate in Couple Psychotherapy. She has also developed couple psychotherapy training programs in Sweden, the USA – San Francisco and New York, and Poland – Warsaw, Poznan and Krakow.
She has published many articles and chapters in the field of couple psychoanalysis. Her book ‘A Couple State of Mind: Psychoanalysis of Couples – the Tavistock Relationships Model’ (2019) is available in several languages. Her latest book ‘Couple Relations: A Contemporary Introduction’ was published in 2025 and is available as an audio book. Her forthcoming book ’Love, It’s Meaning and Exploration in Couple Therapy’, co-edited with Julie Friend, is due to be published in July 2026.
In the Media
POD CAST - February, 22 2026
Episode 198: An Analyst’s ‘Couple State of Mind’ with Mary Morgan, (London) – IPA Off the Couch
Stephen Seligman, PhD.
Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis; Training and Supervising Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis & Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; Author, Relationships in Development: Infancy, Intersubjectivity, Attachment (Routledge, 2018; translations in Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Ukrainian (delayed); co-editor of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice (American Psychiatric Press); Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues.
Dr Seligman is the author of over 100 articles, chapters and reviews, many of which take up the intersection of infancy, the infantile and psychoanalytic theory and practice. He has been involved in the development of the original “Fraiberg model” of infant-parent psychotherapy for several decades.
Prof. Stanley Ruszczynski
Stanley Ruszczynski is a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist, and teacher, in private practice.
Between 1997 and 2021, he was a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic, part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust (including holding the role of Clinic Director, 2005-2016). The Portman Clinic offers psychotherapeutic treatment to patients disturbed by their criminality, violence or damaging sexual behaviours. Between 1979 and 1997, he was a senior member of staff at Tavistock Relationships (including holding the roles of Deputy Director, 1987-1993). He has taught extensively in the UK and abroad and over the last ten years, together with Mary Morgan, has established the practice of psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy in Poland, for which they have been awarded Honorary Membership of the Polish Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
He has authored many book chapters and journal articles, and is a contributory editor and co-editor of five books, including Psychotherapy with Couples (Karnac Books, 1993), Intrusiveness and Intimacy in the Couple (Karnac Books, 1995) co-edited with James Fisher, and Lectures on Violence, Perversion and Delinquency (Karnac Books, 2007), co-edited with David Morgan.
Debra Gill
Debra Gill, LCSW is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the Contemporary Freudian Society (PTI-CFS) and is a member of the permanent faculty. She also teaches, supervises and offers continuing education seminars at the Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (MITPP). She has recently contributed chapters to psychoanalytic publications on intergenerational trauma, addiction and presents on analytic treatment of adults with early anxieties.
Julie Friend
Julie Friend, LCSW, BCD, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist serving individuals and couples, and offering professional consultation to individuals and groups. A Board and founding member of the Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group, she was director of its three-year Intensive Study Program from 2010 to 2022 and continues as core faculty and on its curriculum committee. She serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, and is an invited faculty at William Alanson White’s Couple Therapy Training and Education Program.
She has explored creative engagement and love in couple relationships, and her publications include “Love as Creative Illusion and its place in psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy” (2013) and “Creative Illusion in Couples: Thoughts about the value of transitional experience for couple relationships” (2021). Her upcoming book “Love, Its Meaning and Exploration in Couple Therapy” (Routledge, Fall 2026), is co-edited with Mary Morgan.
Dr. Judith Pickering
Dr. Judith Pickering is a Psychoanalytic Couple Therapist, Psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst. She is author of Being in Love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love (Routledge, 2008), The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy: Spiritual Practice, the Apophatic Way and Bion (Routledge, 2019) (winner of the 2020 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis clinical book award); Transformation in Love: Bion and the Couple. London: (Routledge, forthcoming), and co-editor of Recycling Madness: Clinical Writings of Giles Clark (Routledge, 2025) as well as numerous book chapters, journal articles and papers on couple therapy, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and musicology. She wrote a book chapter ‘A question of True Love’ in Love, Its Meaning and Exploration in Couple Therapy, edited by Mary Morgan and Julie Friend, The Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, London: Routledge, forthcoming.
The topic of her PhD in Psychology was love and couple therapy. She is on the Editorial board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology and The Journal of Couple and Psychotherapy. She has a private practice in Sydney, Australia.
Judith is also a Musicologist who trained at the Kodály Institute, Hungary, Canberra School of Music, Australia, and Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest. She wrote Early Childhood Music Education, (Arts Council of Australia, 1989) and Acoustically Pure Intonation (Musicology thesis, Australian National University, 1996).
Dr. Amy Levy
Dr. Amy Levy is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association’s (APsA) Commission on Artificial Intelligence (CAI), serves on the subcommittee “Artificial Intelligence” for the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) committee, “Psychoanalysis and Technology,” serves on the editorial board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and she is Editor of the Substack series, "AI in My Mind," for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. She is the author of the book, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive. Dr. Levy lectures internationally on the intersection of psychoanalysis and artificial intelligence and maintains a private practice in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
