Editorial

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

I am delighted to be writing the editorial to this special edition of the Journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis focusing on relationship endings, particularly as 2021 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the implementation of the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, legislation that provided a route out of marriage without having to prove that a “matrimonial offence” had been committed.

The ending of the commitment that comprised two intertwined lives, soaked through with romanticism and love, hope and societal approbation, calls for the creation of new ways of working for the clinician. The seven new articles contained within this issue illustrate, from different practices, countries, and orientations, the how and why of helping couples and families face the unimaginable; to shake themselves loose of the history that binds them and garner enough agency to conceive a new life as two separate individuals with no shared couple space between them, with the exception of their children.

This issue starts with Avi Shmueli's description of the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service (DSCS), based at Tavistock Relationships, a timely psychoanalytic article describing the extension of “normal” couple psychotherapy, taking into account the catastrophe on many levels that affects many couples faced with separation.

Shmueli begins with a reminder that separation and divorce is a product of a couple's original unconscious dynamic that can no longer contain them. Whilst contemplating therapeutic technique, we are reminded of the intense pressure facing therapists trying to support two people dealing with unprecedented and simultaneous levels of change, the “who am I, where am I, what have I done and where and how do I live” questions that assault couples caught up divorce.

The couple's projective system, defending against reality, exerts intense pressure both