Marital Concord and Discord

At the outset it is worthwhile to restate an analytic maxim: Humans respond to symbols. While this can be seen as obvious or redundant, it in fact accounts for many phenomena that are otherwise incomprehensible and/or inexplicable. Therefore, in any analytic inquiry, the starting point must be, “What does this mean to the individual under consideration?” It is misleading to assume that the same happening means the same thing to two different individuals even if they happen to be marital partners.

An example may serve to illustrate how humans respond to symbols. Since this discussion concerns marital issues, let us consider the popular example of the couple that live together for years, perhaps until his mother dies, and then marry. They should get along as before since they reside in the same apartment, work at the same jobs, and socialize with the same friends. Right? Wrong! Many times the pair disintegrates after a week or 10 days; they split and go their separate ways. This takes us to the core of our inquiry: marriage symbolizes something that is unique. It should be noted that the focus of this paper is on the person presenting him (her) self for treatment.

The marital dyad is one form of a pair; pairing is one of the methods of dealing with anxiety. The other two methods of dealing with anxiety are (1) integration within a group and (2) paranoid hostility. Concerning pairs, my daughter once observed, ‘The nice thing about living with someone is it gives you someone to blame.” Which is to say that the marital dyad lends itself readily to projections or externalizations.

Some years ago my daughters attended ballet school. One of the advanced techniques was toe dancing. However, each pupil was required to be able to support himself or herself on his or her toes before having a partner. The universal desire was to have a partner early on to hold up the dancer. This simple illustration has applicability psychologically as well. It is popular to want a marital partner