COUPLES AND FAMILIES TODAY

The configurations of couples and families are in constant transformation, influenced by socioeconomic, cultural, and technological factors in different societies. Traditional family models coexist with a diversity of living arrangements, such as single-parent families, blended families, and same-sex families. These changes pose new challenges for psychoanalysis, a discipline rooted in understanding the unconscious in human relationships and in the group structures of couples and families. Do the processes of culturalization and cultural destruction influence the psychic construction and the forms of relational linkage in contemporary society? How do we think about the difficulties in the process of symbolization and sublimation of the death drive and destruction? How do we approach from psychoanalysis the changes and transformations in family and couple structures and their manifestation in aspects such as maternal and paternal functions, gender issues, the new place of women and men in the couple, the recognition of same-sex couples, and reproductive technologies? What consequences do all these transformations have on unconscious alliances at the intrasubjective, intersubjective, and transubjective levels? How do we think about these different levels in relation to identificatory networks? How do we conceive current devices to observe the unconscious in links? How do we reflect from intersubjective psychoanalysis on the implementation of containment and support devices in extreme situations, such as natural disasters or wars? The congress offers an opportunity to discuss these topics, share advances and reflections, and highlight the importance of psychoanalysis in understanding and clinically addressing new family and couple dynamics. At the same time, it underscores the need to contribute to and advance this discipline in the face of contemporary evolutions.