You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dr. Giovacchini's interesting formulations in this paper are difficult to discuss because he appears to have amalgamated two distinct entities which he treats as one.
He states: “Marriage is a special type of object relationship which can be understood from several viewpoints.” It would be more precise to say that marriage is a social institution which attempts to impose certain covenants and codes upon adult heterosexual relationships.
Men and women presumably enter into marriage because they are looking for social sanctions and social protection of their mutual interests. In such an arrangement they accept what they may consider both the virtues and vices of a standard contract which society has drawn up for them.
Within the context of this restrictive covenant, a man and a woman develop an “object relationship.” This relationship is an amalgam not only of their actualities as human beings but also of their repetition compulsions and of the special meaning for them of the marriage contract itself. I think that a discussion of the personal interaction and of the unconscious meaning of the “contract” as if they were both part of the same bundle oversimplifies the issues.
It might be noted that this aspect of marital interaction has been very well treated in a paper which Dr. Giovacchini should include in his bibliography (Stein, Martin. [1956]. “The Marriage Bond.” Psa. Quart, Vol. 25, pp. 238-59).