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Received as The Forum went to press.
Dr. Giovacchini's assumption that marriage is a special type of object relationship is akin to my own ideas, and that is why participation in this discussion is particularly pleasurable for me.
It is true that in our practice we find the two different categories that Dr. Giovacchini has termed Character Object Relationship and Symptom Object Relationship. However, my collaborators and I have arrived at the conclusion that frequently in our cases it was advisable not to consider true marital interaction and its pathology when one of the members of the couple was overtly or covertly psychotic.
Since the publication of my paper “Projective Identification and Marital Conflict”1 in 1955, my research in collaboration with others has dealt with transference behavior in the analytic situation, particularly in those patients who showed problems with the marital partner.
The analysis of such patients indicated that during the preoedipal stages (or early oedipal, as we call them) of life, the process of projective identification has been so intense as to remain unsolved. However, some parts of their egos survive and develop the oedipal triangular situation with its many vicissitudes and outcomes. This part contains: (a) the disposition for establishing subsequently a couple interaction with the logical disturbances derived from the unsolved triangular situation, and (b) the capacity of falling in love by putting the ego ideal in another person. The other part of the ego which is involved in the process of projective identification extremely weakens the surviving part of the ego mentioned before, and one of the consequences of this takes place at the moment of falling in love.
The degree of this weakness opens two possibilities: if it is too high, we find cases which Dr. Giovacchini describes as Character Object Relationship; if it is too low, we find what I call “the movement of projective identification into disturbed marital interaction.” The