Adelphi Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Treating infidelity isn’t only treating couples hoping to recover from infidelity. Many patients in individual psychotherapy grapple with conflicts around infidelity. Unfaithful partners wonder if they should leave their spouses for their affair partners. Affair partners wonder if they should end it with unfaithful partners who won’t leave their spouses for them. Betrayed partners wonder if they should end relationships with unfaithful partners or try to reconcile.

 

Lawrence Josephs’ new book (2018) The Dynamics of Infidelity: Applying Relationship Science to Psychotherapy Practice published by the American Psychological Association addresses these challenging, but all too common, clinical situations. Josephs reviews the most recent research of relationship science on the psychology of intimate relationships that he applies to the clinical problems associated with infidelity.

 

He then goes on to develop an integrative approach to both individual and couples treatment. That approach draws on evidence based psychodynamic approaches such as mentalization based therapy and transference focused therapy as well as marital communication skills training, emotion-focused therapy, and mindfulness. Dr. Josephs also has an accompanying training video available for streaming through the American Psychological Association called Restoring Trust After Infidelity that demonstrates his approach to couples therapy.

 

Dr. Lawrence Josephs is a professor at the Derner School of Psychology of Adelphi University. He is an editor at the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and in private practice in New York City. Dr. Josephs regularly publishes in psychoanalytic journals, like Psychoanalytic Psychology, as well as more research-oriented journals, like Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. Dr. Josephs also has a Psychology Today blog called “Between the Sheets: The Hidden Psychology of Intimate Relationships”.

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His faculty profile can be found here.

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