TICP Scientific Meetings
Upcoming Events
May 14, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm ATTACHMENT AND SEXUAL DESIRE IN COUPLES: A FALSE DIVIDERegister NowErotic desire and the need for security, upon which attachment is based, are fundamental to the experience of love and the formation of long-term couple relationships. Sustained, gratifying sexual activity over time rests on the integration of these needs, whereby safety provides the partners the freedom for an erotic life and sex enlivens a sense of stability. Yet, many couple relationships suffer from problems that interfere with or arrest their sexual relations.
The popular media and couple therapy literature are replete with cases of the loss of sexual desire in long term couple relationships. The narrative explanation most frequently offered is that the biology of sex and attachment are incompatible; good sex requires novelty; and familiarity over time equates to death in the bedroom. Thus, attachment based needs for security and erotic desire are positioned as reciprocally negating. From this viewpoint, a couple’s inevitable drift toward predictability in the service of security also signals the decline of excitement and erotic love. Love is confused with merger, and this must be countered by efforts to create novelty and opportunities for separateness. But when considering couple relationships, is it necessary to view attachment in direct competition with erotic love?
In this paper, I propose that sustained sexual desire within a long-term couple relationship can be conceptualized as a complex experience that is best understood as an integration of attachment needs and erotic desire. I describe aspects of the theoretical legacy that have contributed to a split between attachment and sexual desire. I argue that the origins of attachment and sexuality are not easily or usefully separated into distinct categories in either infantile or adult experience.
Upcoming Events
Upcoming Events
TICP Workshops
Upcoming Events
May 3, 2025 10:00 am – 4:00 pm The Art (s) of Traumatic Loss and the Work of Mourning: Art-Making, Collaboration, and the Journey from Bystander to Empathic Self-Witness with Donna Bassin, M.P.S, Ph.DRegister Now“In a dark time, the eye begins to see”
Theodore Roethke – – –
Donna Bassin will give a two-part ‘artist talk’ informed by psychodynamic insights and illustrations from her artwork, public installations, and films, delving into her multifaceted ‘life-work’ as a psychoanalyst, community activist, filmmaker, and photo-based artist. The aftermath of September 11 profoundly influenced her artistic and clinical work, reshaping psychoanalytic perspectives on traumatic loss and collective mourning. Her long-term projects critically examine the psychological scars of war, the erosion of democracy, and, more recently, the climate crisis and the environmental destruction of our planet.