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Dr. Giovacchini's scholarly paper provides a fresh view of marital transaction, interaction, complementarity, and the melding of defenses. The clinical material shows sensitivity and skill. It tends to support the view of marriage as a complex series of interactions and transactions in delicate balance between two individuals. It reminds us that in any clinical situation we are dealing with three sick bodies at one time—the two spouses and the sick marriage. The tendency for repetition in object-seeking is highlighted as is the fact that interdependent gratifications in a marriage can be overlooked in a purely intrapsychic orientation to conflicts and need.
While I am in agreement with the author's views on the nature of the marital interaction, I must question the theoretical basis on which it rests. A view of relationships as primarily symbiotic and/or characterized by introjection-projection is a very limiting position. The definitions “character object relationship” and “symptom object relationship” add little to the current language of ego psychology and are at best too all-inclusive and too arbitrary. The concepts tend both to overcomplicate and oversimplify matters. The two case illustrations are not convincingly nor startlingly different from one another.
Every choice of a spouse does in some way cater to defensive needs, but those marriages which Dr. Giovacchini categorizes as “symptom object relationship” are, in my opinion, neither so shallow nor so brittle as is suggested. People in these marriages also respond to whole-objects as well as to part-objects in their spouses, and healthy individuals also respond to part-objects in their relationships.
Although I agree that introjective-projective mechanisms aid in developing integration and self-esteem, I do not find that partners in lasting marriages are similar at all levels of psychic organization. Many dissimilar partners can develop a satisfactory characterological “fit” that leads to a stable marriage. In