Discussion

It is both a privilege and a pleasure to discuss Dr. Maltas' original and thought-provoking paper on concurrent therapies, the latest in her series on the treatment of couples in which there has been a history of sexual abuse. Of the many fascinating and complex issues it raises, I will limit my discussion to the “parallel process” involving the therapists, together with some conceptualizations of marital conflict that I find helpful, with specific illustrations from the case presented. I will focus on factors that shape each partner's subjective structures of meaning and the intersubjective disjunctions between the members of the couple that can result. In particular, I will emphasize adaptive, self-protective mechanisms and unconscious guilt, both of which contribute to a tendency toward actualization of the partner-to-partner transferences and reenactment of experiences in earlier relationships. I will conclude with some implications for treatment and comments about the way in which the couple therapist is in a unique position to make a contribution to the resolution of that conflict.

“Parallel process” was originally described in a narrow sense as an occurrence in supervision, in which the therapist, owing to a transient identification with the patient, acts toward the supervisor or group to which he or she is presenting a case in a way similar to the manner