From the renowned clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Orna Guralnik, of the acclaimed series Couples Therapy, a groundbreaking exploration of our most intimate relationships—and how understanding them can transform the way we see ourselves and the world.
COUPLES:
On Loving Another
by Dr. Orna Guralnik
Penguin Press, February 2027
(via The Gernert Company)
Falling in love changes everything. It opens us up—to hope, inspiration, and the possibility of caring deeply for another. Yet folded into this miracle is an unavoidable reality: Sooner or later, the central crisis of every relationship emerges—your partner is not you. What matters may not be a couple’s perfect compatibility but their capacity to tolerate difference; can they stay curious when wounded, communicate truths, and forgive each other’s failures? All qualities in perilously short supply in our contemporary world.
What are the forces that bring people together and then pull them apart? What does it take to choose love? In COUPLES, Dr. Orna Guralnik draws on decades as a psychologist, academic, and couples therapist to peel back the underlying layers of intimate relationships. Tensions over sex, money, parenting, and the division of labor are rooted in much deeper issues. In COUPLES, we learn a process grounded in psychoanalytic listening that allows us to break free from the repetitive patterns we reenact with one another.
Being alongside Dr. Guralnik in actual sessions with many of her couples, we see how moving from a furious state of blame to a place of empathy requires venturing into the unconscious—our childhoods, the traumas we bear, and the ways in which we are held hostage by deeper forces of culture and ideology. Following this path, we stand to gain not only a deeper bond with our partner but also the capacity to see the world through the eyes of another. The work we do in our most intimate relationships can reverberate far beyond them, joining the forces that mend this troubled world.
Riveting and revolutionary, COUPLES shows that the conflict and redemption inherent in relationships can be among the most profound opportunities of our lives.
Dr. Orna Guralnik is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, widely known for her work in the critically acclaimed docuseries Couples Therapy. She is on faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in New York City, where she lectures and publishes on the topics of psychoanalysis and the sociopolitical, couples’ treatment, and dissociation and depersonalization.
Ever since her mother’s death, 29-year-old Akiko has led a modest and reclusive life in Tokyo. Her monotonous job as a bookkeeper offers little excitement, and she has no real friends or family. Then, one evening, she runs into an old face from her schooldays: Kento is an outsider, just like her, and even back then she always felt drawn to him. As if that wasn’t enough, Akiko is shocked to discover that the man she thought of as her dad was in fact only a hired actor, paid by her single mother to play a part. Akiko begins to wonder: is everything a lie? And, more profoundly: who is she, really?
Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley
Book 1: BEYOND THE RUBY VEIL
Book 2: INTO THE MIDNIGHT VOID
Rhett and his brother, Nash, have never been allowed to play board games. It’s their mom’s most important rule; the twins don’t know why, but they know not to push her on it. When their mom suddenly disappears, they’re reunited with Ace, their long-lost grandfather, who reveals that their family is descended from a board game character who escaped his game and lived in the real world. Their family now has the ability to enter the world of any game they want—but this gift also comes with a price. A game character who’s wanted revenge against their mom for decades has finally caught her and is holding her hostage in the world of a game. Which game? That’s up to Rhett and Nash to figure out, even if it means breaking Mom’s most important rule.