Epilogue

When we began putting this issue of psychoanalytic inquiry together, our aim was to highlight the approaches of several psychoanalytic schools of thought to working with couples. This in itself is a groundbreaking venture. Psychoanalytic schools have been slow to develop a body of literature on the treatment of couples. Clearly it is time to underline the usefulness and possibility of analytic work outside the one-on-one setting to which we are most accustomed. What I find especially exciting is that each paper in this issue not only succeeds in representing an approach within a particular school but also presents a uniquely individual creative approach. In my closing comments, I highlight these contributions.

Virginia Goldner is a good representative for modern relational theory. She invites the reader into her consulting room and generously provides many clinical examples that give the reader a clear sense of how she works and thinks. Her paper describes an integrative approach for treating couples in abusive relationships. What I feel most is an awe of her creative approach to the challenge of a very difficult population. The dynamics she elucidates in these couples are key to understanding many couples I see in my own practice whose behavior is not as extreme. She presents several challenges with which she coped in her own creative style. She raises the often ignored question of how the therapist can sustain moral clarity in the intersubjective context of a treatment setting.

Fred Sander's representation of a classical approach is a bit unclear to me. I get the impression that most classical analysts would not find themselves in the couple setting, and so Sander's attempt to apply a drive theory model to couple therapy is a unique contribution. Conceptually, he presents classical analysis as emphasizing interpretation of unconscious factors, but what I find most interesting in his paper is his development of the “Pygmalion-Galatea process.”