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This paper is based on the premise that the developmental crises that occur in adulthood can provide new opportunities for intrapsychic growth. Recognizing individuation as a line of development that continues throughout life (Joffe and Sandler, 1965), I shall demonstrate how a particular kind of marriage that ends in divorce can facilitate internal change. I shall analyze a type of short-lived marriage from which three divorcees emerged significantly stronger in their sense of being lovable women. To understand the interpersonal and intrapsychic processes enabling this development requires multiple frameworks.
The analysis of these women's experience is based on two assumptions: first, a conflict model of human behavior; second, the principle that individuals have powerful motives to grow and repair. In relationship to her husband, each woman was able to grow through making new identifications that modified ego and superego structure. Even after adolescence, periods of instinctual change may occur that allow the ego to become more open to change (Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein, 1964). The kind of marriage I shall describe produced such a period. For these women, the marital relationship served as a catalyst for personality development.
This paper is intended to show how regression within the context of the marital relationship served an adaptive purpose for each of these women.1 As unusually powerful transference objects, these