Families in Transformation is a collection of essays by eminent scholars on the psychoanalysis of couples and families and provides a wide ranging and articulated picture of the current situation in Europe. The reader will find various psychoanalytical models applied in it: from object relations theory to group analysis to the theory of links, encountering the lively and rich French, Italian, and British schools at work in different settings. Themes range from myths to secrets, to incest and the brotherly dimension of families; from adoptive families to the conflicts over separation, in addition to papers discussing perverse and violent couples. The book shows how it is possible to put together an understanding of the individual's internal world with the interpersonal dynamics of families, their bonds and relations, expressed in somatic and active terms at the inter- and trans-generational level.

Series Editor's Preface , Preface , Prologue , Introduction , Couples and Families Today , The psychical reality of linking , Intersubjective links in the family: the function of identification , The mythic narrative neo-container in psychoanalytic family therapy: shame and treason as heritage , Where is the unconscious located? Reflections on links in families and couples , The frightened couple , Adoptive families: what pathways for subjectivisation? , Transformations through repetitions of female and male representations in reconstructed families , Oedipus in the New Families , The Oedipus complex and the new generations , When the fraternal prevails over the oedipal: a possible interpretative model for modern couples , Clinical Work with Families and Couples , Couples and the perverse link , Couple and family psychoanalytic psychotherapy's contribution to current psychoanalysis , Fraternal incest: fraternal links , Anamorphosis, sloughing of containers, and family psychical transformations , Infidelity in the couple relationship: one form of relationship suffering , The other, the stranger, the unconscious: psychoanalysis and multi-ethnic therapeutic relationships , Old and new couple secrets: how to deal with them? , Family myths * and pathological links