Couples Therapy as Therapy: Fostering Individual Growth in Conjoint Contexts

This paper examines conjoint couples therapy as a treatment modality for fostering individual development. The central thesis is that self psychologically informed couples therapy—because it simultaneously offers both the therapist’s empathic immersion in each partner’s subjective world and the inevitable confrontation with the other partner’s differently organized subjectivity—offers a unique therapeutic experience that transcends the current dialectic in psychotherapy between provision and confrontation. After a brief introduction to intersubjective systems theory, the paper examines the individual’s experience in couples therapy. Disruptions and repairs of each partner’s narcissistic vulnerability can create new pathways for adult development. Two issues in individual development are then discussed in detail: the tendency of past experience, especially trauma, to dominate the present, and the difficulty partners have to recognize and tolerate alterity. Each issue offers the possibility of individual development within the couples therapy context. The paper concludes with a case example that demonstrates both partner’s mastering of vexing individual issues in a conjoint context.