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‘Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.’ [Jung, C.G. 1925/1954. ‘Marriage as a psychological relationship’. The Development of Personality. CW 17 para 331.]
Couple therapy is never for the faint hearted. As Jung recognised, for the couple there is the shock and disturbance of trying to move from what he termed a more instinctual relationship, eg nondifferentiated and based more upon archetypal projections, to a psychological relationship in which the individuality of the other can be recognised, permitted and valued. For the therapist there is the delicate balancing act of trying to hold differing intrapsychic developments and interpersonal transferences whilst determinedly maintaining a focus on the conscious and unconscious couple relationship as the living third entity in the consulting room; and all of this is taking place within a therapeutic frame which inevitably threatens to activate any unresolved Oedipal anxieties within any of its participants, clients or therapists. Brett Kahr in his chapter cites Winnicott's and Bion's agreed use of the phrase ‘white heat’ to describe the intensity of the atmosphere that can be engendered in our consulting rooms, and I would suggest that the ‘white heat’ of an individual therapy session is as nothing compared to the complexity of containment and survival of thinking required of a couple therapist.
Since its inception in 1948 as the Family Discussion Bureau, Tavistock Relationships, in its various acronymed forms, has produced an impressive stream of publications helping to define and develop a psychoanalytic model of couple therapy. Founded at a time when the stability of marriages was undermined in the aftermath of the second world war, it was unique in taking intrapsychic psychoanalytic concepts and applying them to interpersonal relationships so that the couple relationship became a psychic object in its ow