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It is the repeated observation throughout the literature (Dicks, 1967; Framo, 1972; Bowen, 1978; Slipp, 1984; Scharff and Scharff, 1991) that spouses are bonded in marriage with similar unconscious conflictual hopes and fears. That is, they deeply hope that their sense of self will finally be accepted, affirmed, and encouraged while they also deeply fear that it will not be. From the self-psychological and intersubjective perspectives, this conflict is precisely the same for the patient entering treatment. As Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood (1987) have noted, patients enter treatment “with hopes for an intersubjective context in which thwarted strivings for differentiated selfhood may become liberated … and with fears that the violations of self-experience encountered in childhood will be repeated with the analyst” (p. 65).
This chapter proposes a six-step model of conjoint therapy for empathically exploring marital conflict. As each step is presented, the key concepts of intersubjective theory upon which it is based are articulated. In