POUPLIER, M. (Stuttgart). ‘Über die Einbeziehung von Partnern Partnerinnen in die Stationäre Psychotherapie’ (On including partners in out-patient psychotherapy). Stationäre Psychotherapie (Out-patient therapy). Göttingen, F. Beese,  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Pp.  119-32.

The author argues eloquently in favour of including the partner at some point in the therapy with patients who seek help mainly because of serious disturbance in their ‘couple relationship’.

She quite rightly opposes the view that couple relationships impair self-realisation. On the contrary, she considers a person to be more likely to achieve individuation if he works through the conflicts occurring in the partner relationship instead of breaking the relationship up.

She treats only couples whose difficulties arise out of neurotic conflicts and not those who are incompatible on account of reality factors (i.e., great discrepancies in maturity or in cultural background).

Based on a book by J. Willi called ‘Die Zweierbeziehung’ (the couple relationship) Pouplier found in her clinical work that two people are attracted to each other if they have the same basic conflicts but express them in a complementary way. Hence, she argues, that husband and wife are in a circular relationship: each provokes and reinforces the neurotic conflict of the other.

Furthermore, Pouplier gives an interesting exposition of the difficulties that frequently arise out of the attraction between people with opposite attitude and function types and with different neurotic fixation points (schizoid/depressive/obsessional/hysterical). She finds that in such cases both partners are initially drawn to their opposites and then tend to get entrenched in polarised complementary positions (sadism/masochism, power-seeking/submissiveness, etc.).

The author works at first with one partner and finds that the last third of the course of therapy is the optimal time for including the other partner. The number of joint sessions varies between five and ten, usually at fortnightly intervals. Pouplier is aware of the dangers inherent in this method: the therapist may side with his initial patient and have preconceived ideas about the cause of the marital conflict; he may get the timing of the joint therapy wrong; he