Everyday complaints, endless enactments within repetitive conflicts, sexual cooling, and “we simply cannot hear one another” — these are often only the defensive façade with which patients enter therapy. Yet beneath this narrative there is always a far more complex dynamic of internalized object relations:
- The patient speaks about anxiety — while within the transference there gradually unfolds a fear of symbiotic fusion or the threat of destroying the “good object” through one’s own aggression.
- A couple comes to therapy “to learn how to communicate” — yet behind this façade emerges projective identification: a struggle for omnipotent control, a defense against dependency, and an unconscious effort to avoid vulnerability that threatens the pathological grandiose self.
- Love disappears precisely at the point when the relationship requires a transition toward object constancy. Desire becomes split off from tenderness, and aggression, instead of being integrated in the service of eroticism, begins to destroy the couple’s capacity for intimacy.
It is precisely at these points that we encounter the fundamental tension between Love, Sex, and Aggression.
We invite you to join the clinical seminar series:
“Love, Sex and Aggression: From Normality to Pathology”
Trainer: Otto Kernberg, M.D.
This is a space for professionals who seek to perceive psychic structure behind the patient’s words — and to accurately differentiate levels of pathology in intimacy, identity, and transference.
May 16, 2026 | Component and development of sexual love.
Including:
- Biological and affective foundations
- Mature sexual love
- Transformation of sexual arousal into erotic desire
- Integration of aggression in the service of love
- The conflict between love, aggression, and sexuality
- Transcendence and idealization
- Erotic idealization and its narcissistic distortions
- The role of polymorphous-perverse sexuality
- Achievement of object constancy
- Full sexuality and the continuity of sexual passion
- The dynamics of sexual desire in long-term relationships
- The impact of the pathological grandiose self in pathological narcissism
June 20, 2026 | Adolescence, love relations through life, marital conflict and couples’ treatment.
Among the key topics:
- Adolescent rebellion and the formation of the couple
- Differential diagnosis of adolescent sexuality
- Types and dynamics of marital conflicts
- Chronic marital conflicts and unconscious collusion
- The “shared madness” (folie à deux)
- Partner choice in narcissism
- The life cycle of the narcissistic couple
- Mature dependency vs. struggles for control and power
- The dynamics of sexual desire in long-term relationships
- Narcissism and the maintenance/loss of passion
- Jealousy—from normal to pathological
- The impact of time: working through aging, loss, and illness
- Vulnerability of narcissistic personalities in the face of aging; the denial of time in narcissism
Assessment and Diagnosis of Couples:
- Level of personality organization of each partner
- Envy, devaluation, aggression, and rejection as expressions of narcissistic, sadistic, masochistic, and other personality structures within relationships
- Narcissistic configurations in the couple
- Exploitative dynamics in narcissistic relationships
- Impairments in the capacity for empathy
- Envy as an attack on a valued object
- Devaluation as a defense against envy and dependency
- Aggression and destructiveness in intimate relationships
- Rejection: oscillation between fusion and autonomy
- The interplay of each partner’s individual pathological dynamics in shaping couple conflicts
Guidelines for Therapy:
- Organization of therapy
- Setting
- Working through conflicts and problematic areas in the relationship
July 18, 2026 | Oedipal conflicts, sexual morality, social and political control (over erotic life)
- The nature of the Oedipal conflict and its role in the development of sexual passion
- Dissociation and the pathology of love relationships
- Narcissistic envy toward the Oedipal couple
- Competition within the couple
- Triangulation and its dynamics
- Marital infidelity and long-term love triangles
- Premature Oedipalization and the impact of pregenital aggression
- The couple’s superego and social control
- Group dynamics versus the couple’s intimacy
- Pathology of the superego in love relationships
- Regression of large groups and socially sanctioned cruelty, including toward minorities
- Social legitimization of sexualized aggression and violence
The focus of the seminar series — clinical thinking
Format: Lecture, public supervision, Q&A
Conditions: Simultaneous translation into Ukrainian. Access to recordings for 12 months.
Join us in the exploration of truth at the boundary of clinical practice:
Details and registration: https://pd.uipds.org/clinical_seminar
Best regards,
Ukrainian Institute for Personality Disorders Studies