# About Couples Therapy Collective

Couples Therapy Collective is made up of six qualified psychodynamic practitioners (therapists, counsellors, and psychotherapists) currently completing advanced specialist training in couples psychotherapy at [Tavistock Relationships](https://tavistockrelationships.org), accredited by the [British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC)](https://www.bpc.org.uk).

We came together because we share a conviction: that couples in real difficulty need more than tips for better communication. They need someone who can sit in the room with what is actually happening between two people: the things that cannot be said, the patterns that keep repeating, the feelings that belong to one person but end up lodged in the other.

## Why Tavistock Relationships

There are many routes into couples work. Ours is through a multi-year, clinically supervised training programme grounded in psychoanalytic thinking about how couples function. It is a sustained engagement with the unconscious dynamics of intimate relationships, with regular teaching, supervision, and clinical reflection.

The BPC accreditation means the training has been reviewed against the standards of the British Psychoanalytic Council, a Professional Standards Authority-accredited register and professional body for psychoanalytic and psychodynamic practitioners in the UK.

## What 'psychodynamic' actually means

Psychodynamic therapy is based on the idea that much of what drives your behaviour, especially in intimate relationships, is unconscious. Not hidden by choice, but genuinely outside your awareness.

These patterns usually have roots that predate the relationship. A psychodynamic approach does not ignore what is happening in the present. But it takes seriously the idea that the present is shaped by things you may not fully understand yet.

See [how we work](https://www.couplestherapycollective.co.uk/how-we-work.md).

## A collective, not a clinic

Each therapist in Couples Therapy Collective is an independent practitioner with their own consulting room, fees, and clinical approach within the shared psychodynamic framework. We are not a company. We are colleagues who trained together.