Saturday, October 25, 2025, 9AM - 3PM (PDT)

Annual Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Lecture of 2025

Link Theory: The Interpersonal and Social Dimensions of Psychic Life in Couples

Join PCPG for our Annual Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Lecture in-person at the Brower Center in Berkeley, CA, (available online as well), as we host Elizabeth Palacios García, MD, to present her paper "The Link Theory: A Distinct Psychoanalytic Model for Understanding Human Interactions" with discussant, Benjamin Fife, Psy.D.

This course explores the psychoanalytic concept of the “Link” as an unconscious structure shaping relationships between two or more subjects, distinct from traditional object relations. Focusing on Latin American thinkers beginning with Pichon-Rivière and García Badaracco — it delves deeply into what is now considered a new way of addressing human interactions: a new metapsychology of links developed by Puget and Berenstein. New terminology such as presence, alienness, imposition, and discontinuity influences subjectivity in couples, families, and groups. The Link is viewed as a dynamic, intersubjective space marked by shared and unshareable elements, generating suffering, transformation, and new meanings. The work contrasts the “Logic of the One” with the “Logic of the Two,” emphasizing the role of the present moment in psychoanalytic practice.

Elizabeth Palicios García, MD, is a Psychiatrist, Training Analyst of the Madrid Psychoanalytic Association, and Board Member of a new IPA Study Group in Spain. She is an IPA Child and Adolescent Psychoanalyst, Chair of the IPA Couples and Family Committee (COFAP), and Founding Member of the Child and Adolescent Institution AAPIPNA (Zaragoza). She serves as Director of ASPADE for vulnerable adolescents and Adjunct Faculty in postgraduate programs on child, adolescent, couple, and family psychoanalysis at IPI, Alcalá de Henares University, among others. She is the author of numerous books on couples, family, child and adolescent psychoanalysis, and on psychoanalysis in social crises, including books with Timothy Keogh and David Scharff. Dr. Palicios García maintains a private practice in Zaragoza, Spain.

Benjamin Fife, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice. He works with children, families, couples and individual adults. He has taught in the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis’ Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program (CAPPTP) and has trained and supervised early career mental health clinicians in a wide variety of settings. He is interested in the impact of the socio-political world on psychological theories, clinical practice, and child development. His writings have been published in Damage Magazine and he has a chapter on working with families impacted by the opioid epidemic in the forthcoming book, Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis in Times of Crisis. War, Pandemic and Climate Change, edited by Kristin Fiorella.

PCPG is striving to embrace the principles of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in teaching, mentoring, community building, and engagement. Moreover, PCPG is actively focusing on incorporating equity into policies, processes, and procedures and its organizational structure.

Learning Objectives:



Based on the content of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Compare and contrast two major models for clinical work with couples and families: Object Relations Theory and Link Theory.
2. Explain the meaning of new terminology, including radical difference, presentation, imposition, uncertainty principle, alienness, and interference.
3. Describe the concepts of “The Logic of the One” and “The Logic of the Two.”
4. Explain why Link Theory proposes an epistemological break with traditional psychoanalytic understandings of human relationships.
5. Apply this technical approach to working with "violence in links" and with "suffering arising from participation in human interactions."

Registration / CE Information: 5 CE's are included with the cost of admission to the lecture.

We accept registrations for in-person attendance up through the same day as the event; however, to guarantee a catered lunch, you must register by October 15, 2025.

For virtual attendees, the registration deadline is 6PM (PST) on October 24, 2025.

PCPG is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing professional education for psychologists. PCPG maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Cancellation / Refund Policy:

Registrants who cancel prior to October 15, 2025, will receive a refund minus a $25 administrative charge. Cancellations after October 15, 2025, will be allowed, but with a $50 administrative charge.

Transfer of registrations is not allowed.