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Until the past decade, there has been a dearth of literature in the psychoanalytic canon devoted to couples, and I am deeply grateful to Dr. Fisher for his continued dedication over many years to writing on this topic. His many publications have enriched our theoretical understanding of both couple relationships as well as psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy. It is a particular honor for me to discuss his rich and thought-provoking paper, “The Macbeths in the Consulting Room,” a paper that offers us the opportunity to grapple with complex theoretical ideas about the nature of couple relating and deepens our understanding of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies.
Dr. Fisher's influence on the theoretical development of the contemporary Tavistock model for psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy is undeniable. I want to begin my discussion by attempting to briefly locate his important theoretical contributions in an historical context. The Tavistock model, begun in the late 1940s, constituted the first attempt to apply psychoanalytic concepts to the understanding and treatment of marital difficulties. Born out of a desire to address the needs of couples and families in distress, the founders of what would become the Tavistock Institute for Marital Studies turned to psychoanalysis for assistance in deepening their understanding of the emotional pressures inherent in relationships. It is significant that some very well-known psychoanalysts were involved as consultants and/or organizers in the early stages of this model, including Enid Balint, Michael Balint, and Elizabeth Bott Spillius.
The early Tavistock model relied on the familiar Freudian ideas of transference, countertransference, and the repetition compulsion and worked within the presumption that early experiences with significant others are internalized and structured into unconscious mental life. Moreover, these ideas were brought to bear directly on the understanding of the couple, specifically in terms of how