Couple Dynamics : Psychoanalytic Perspectives in Work with the Individual, the Couple, and the Group 9780429912368, 9781782203315

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COUPLE DYNAMICS

Tavistock Clinic Series Margot Waddell & Jocelyn Catty (Series Editors)

Recent titles in the Tavistock Clinic Series

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COUPLE DYNAMICS Psychoanalytic Perspectives in Work with the Individual, the Couple, and the Group

Edited by

Aleksandra Novakovic

KARNAC

First published in 2016 by Karnac Books 118 Finchley Road London NW3 5HT Copyright © 2016 by Aleksandra Novakovic All contributors retain the copyright to their own chapters. The rights of the editors and contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978–1–78220–331–5 Edited, designed, and produced by Communication Crafts Printed in Great Britain www.karnacbooks.com

To my parents, Radoslava and Miodrag

CONTENTS

series editors’ preface

ix

acknowledgements xiii about the editor and contributors xv

Introduction 1 1

Aggression, love, and the couple Otto F. Kernberg 9

2

Narcissistic problems in sharing space Ronald Britton 29

3

Couples and primitive processes R .D. Hinshelwood 43

4

Transference and enactment in the “oedipal setting” of couple psychotherapy Andrew Balfour 59 vii

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contents

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The quarrelling couple: the couple’s unconscious relations and enactments Aleksandra Novakovic 85

6

Couples becoming parents: a clinical example David Hewison 107

7

Couple and family dynamics and triangular space in group psychotherapy David Vincent 125

8

Oscillating images: perceptions of couples in organizations William Halton & Jenny Sprince 145

9

Belonging to a body larger than one’s own: the pair in the group, the organization, and society Richard Morgan-Jones 165

references 193 index

207

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

Margot Waddell & Jocelyn Catty

S

ince it was founded in 1920, the Tavistock Clinic has developed a wide range of developmental approaches to­ mental health which have been strongly influenced by the ideas of psychoanalysis. It has also adopted systemic family ­ therapy as a theoretical model and a clinical approach to­ family problems. The Clinic is now the largest training institution in Britain for mental health, providing postgraduate and qualifying courses in social work, psychology, psychiatry, and child, adolescent, and adult psychotherapy, as well as in nursing and primary care. It trains about 1,700 students each year in over 60 courses. The Clinic’s philosophy aims at promoting therapeutic­ methods in mental health. Its work is based on the clinical expertise that is also the basis of its consultancy and research activities. The aim of this Series is to make available to the reading public the clinical, theoretical, and research work that is most influential at the Tavistock Clinic. The Series sets out new approaches in the understanding and treatment of psychological disturbance in ­children, adolescents, and adults, both as individuals and in families.

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x

series editors’ preface

Aleksandra Novakovic has managed as editor of Couple Dynamics to create a classic volume on the subject. Not only has she assembled an extraordinarily impressive line-up of authors, but through them she has also brought to the surface the ramifications of couple relationships and their vicissitudes in both the internal and the external world. Not surprisingly, the “oedipal setting” is central to this and becomes a unifying theme of the book. As she says in her Introduction, the book “presents psychoanalytic thinking about the phenomenon of the couple and couple dynamics in internal and external reality and at different levels of organization”. She has put together, in meticulous detail and with masterly editing, a volume that comprehends the worlds of both intrapsychic and interpersonal relationships: those internal to the individual from the beginning, as lived out later in an actual couple’s choice of relationship of the one with the other; of that couple’s inclusion of a third within the original dyad; and of how that couple/family take their place in wider society. Areas explored belong in a wide spectrum of considerations: areas that will be relevant to clinicians, whether individual, couple, family, or group professionals, but will also be of interest to nonprofessionals, those who simply want to understand the dynamics of relationships more generally—the underlying factors that either positively contribute to or subvert personal, familial, and social functioning. This book provides some crucial foundations and building blocks to an understanding of the fundamentals of social relationships: How do people negotiate psychic space? Whence do they derive the capacity to share it? What do they fall back on in order to manage it? What direction does the mind take if “managing it” seems too taxing or even impossible? What kind of oedipal couple do people internally carry with them, mentally and emotionally? These are all crucial questions; the respective authors between them draw on a wide range of individual, couple, group, institutional, and organizational experience, underpinned by a rich literature based mainly on Freud’s, Klein’s, and Bion’s thinking. In particular, the reader is “allowed in” (as it were) to the intricacies, pains, and travails of sustaining a couple relationship and extending it to include others without excessive rancour, disturbance, or,

series editors’ preface

xi

indeed, idealization, as couple dynamics have to yield, in time, to family dynamics and then move out into the wider community of work and life. With remarkable delicacy, Couple Dynamics tackles profound issues that affect us all—questions encompassing love and aggression and the vital connections between, say, idealization and contempt and everything that lies along that spectrum—and, above all, that extraordinarily complex matter: the nature of intimacy. We, now two of us, as Series Editors, are proud to have Couple Dynamics as part of this long-running Series.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I

would like to express my deep gratitude to all contributors for their inspiring and generous contributions. I am grateful to the Tavistock Clinic Series Editors Margot Waddell, for her considerate support for this book, and Jocelyn Catty, for her kind and thoughtful help. I would like to thank the Yale University Press, New Haven and London, for permission to reprint Otto Kernberg’s chapter “Aggression, Love, and the Couple” in Love Relations: Normality and Pathology, 1995, and Karnac, London, for permission to reprint Ronald Britton’s chapter “Narcissistic Problems in Sharing Space” in Sex, Death, and the Superego: Experiences in Psychoanalysis, 2003. I would also like to thank the M. C. Escher Company, The Netherlands, for giving me permission to use the woodcut Day and Night, 1938, by M. C. Escher, for the front cover of this book.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Balfour originally trained as a Clinical Psychologist at University College London, as an Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, and as a Couple Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, where he has been Clinical Director since 2006. He also worked for many years in the Adult Department of the Tavistock Clinic after training there, and he was joint organizer of the course “Psychodynamic Approaches to Old Age”. He has a research interest in the area of dementia care and teaches and lectures widely, both in Britain and abroad. Ronald Britton was born in Lancaster, educated in the Lancaster Royal Grammar School and University College London, and medically qualified at University College Hospital in 1956. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Distinguished Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and received the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) Award for Outstanding Scientific Contributions in July 2013 and the Sigourney Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychoanalysis in January 2014. He was Chair of the Children and Families Department of the Tavi­stock Clinic in the 1970s, where he met W. R. Bion. He became President of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 2002 xv

xvi

about the editor and contributors

and was Vice-President of the IPA. His books include The Oedipus Complex Today (1989), Belief and Imagination (1998), Sex, Death, and the Superego (2003), and Between Mind and Brain (2015). William Halton is a freelance organizational consultant, executive coach, and supervisor, with a background in child and adult psychotherapy. Formerly a principal consultant at Tavistock Consulting, he has consultancy experience in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. He is a contributor to Social Defences against Anxiety (ed. David Armstrong & Michael. Rustin, 2014), The Unconscious at Work (ed. Anton Obholzer & Vega Zagier Roberts, 1994), and Working Below the Surface (ed. Clare Huffington, William Halton, David Armstrong, & Jane Pooley, 2004); he has also published in the journal Organisational and Social Dynamics. David Hewison is a Consultant Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Head of Research at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships. He is the co-author (with Christopher Clulow & Harriet Drake) of Couple Therapy for Depression: A Clinician’s Guide to Integrative Practice (2014), based on the model of couple therapy he developed as an evidence-based treatment for depression in the NHS. He is a Jungian Training Analyst at the Society of Analytical Psychology, and he has taught internationally and published widely on individual and couple therapy and research. R. D. Hinshelwood is Professor in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and former Clinical Director, The Cassel Hospital, London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is the author of A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (1989) and other books and articles on Kleinian psychoanalysis. In 2013 he edited, jointly with Nuno Torres, Bion’s Sources: The Shaping of His Paradigms. He is the author of Research on the Couch: Single Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic Knowledge (2013). Otto F. Kernberg is Director of the Personality Disorders Institute at The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Professor of Psychiatry at the Cornell University, and Training and Supervising Analyst of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training

about the editor and contributors

xvii

and Research. Dr Kernberg is a Past President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and he was Director of the C. F. Menninger Memorial Hospital and Director of the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation. He was Supervising and Training Analyst of the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis, Director of the General Clinical Service of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University, and Associate Chairman and Medical Director of The New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. He is the author of 13 books and co-author of 12 others, most recently (with Frank E. Yeomans & John F. Clarkin), Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Clinical Guide (2015). Richard Morgan-Jones was educated at Cambridge, Oxford, and Exeter Universities, where he studied Anthropology, Theology, and Education. He is a Supervising and Training Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist with the British Psychotherapy Foundation, a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council, Elected Board member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, and member of the Opus and Restorative Justice Council. He is a writer, organizational consultant, and executive coach and Director of Work Force Health: Consulting and Research. His work has been explored in an international workshop and in a book entitled: The Body of the Organisation and Its Health (2010). Aleksandra Novakovic is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a psychoanalyst. She was Joint Head of the Inpatient & Community Psychology Service and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the Adult Mental Health Psychology Service. She worked at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and taught and supervised on the Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training. She teaches for the British Psychoanalytic Association and supervises on the Reflective Practice in Organizations Course, Institute of Group Analysis. She co-edited (with David Bell), Living on the Border: Psychotic Processes in the Individual, the Couple, and the Group (2013). Jenny Sprince is a Tavistock-trained child psychotherapist and organizational consultant. She is Clinical Director of Placement

xviii

about the editor and contributors

Support, an agency offering consultation to professional networks for looked-after children and providing therapeutic interventions for adoptive families. She is co-founder and Chair of the Association for Psychodynamic Practice and Counselling in Organisational Settings (appcios.com), which is a Member Institution of the British Psychoanalytic Council. She has contributed to several books and journals about her work in adoption and as a consultant within various settings including schools, social services, and therapeutic communities. David Vincent trained at the Institute of Group Analysis and at the British Association of Psychotherapists and worked for many years in the NHS at Forest House Psychotherapy Clinic as a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist. He is trained in mentalizationbased therapy (MBT) and interpersonal therapy (IPT) and is an IPT supervisor. For five years he was Chair of the Institute of Group Analysis and is at present Chair of Ethics at the British Psychoanalytic ­Council. He has retired from the NHS and is now in private practice in Central London.

COUPLE DYNAMICS

Introduction

T

his book presents psychoanalytic thinking about the ­phenomenon of the couple and couple dynamics in internal and external reality and at different levels of organization: the “couple” in the individual’s internal world, the dynamics between partners in a couple relationship, and the dynamics between the couple and the group. It will interest professionals in different disciplines who find couple dynamics relevant to their work. The idea for this book came from several sources. In my work with couples and teaching on the couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy training at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, I was confronted with number of questions; to name a few: what it is that partners jointly create, intrapsychically and interpersonally; what constitutes the unconscious couple “fit”; is there a couple mentality, akin to Bion’s (1961) group mentality, or a couple entity that is more than the sum of its individual parts; and is there a “couple” in the mind—an “internal couple”—and, if so, how to conceptualize this. Also, comparison of individual supervisions and the discussions in the clinical seminars suggested that the group context of clinical seminars facilitates thinking about the relationship between the couple and the group and the couple’s relationship with a third party, such as their children and extended 1

2

introduction

family, friendship groups, and, in the wider social context, the couple’s experience of belonging to ethnic, racial, or cultural groups. This brought to my attention not only the impact of different clinical settings on the observer and the observed, but also how our reflections on the observer and observed vary with context. Bion states that “the group can be regarded as an interplay between individual needs, group mentality, and culture” (1961, p. 55), and the incentive for this book was to explore thinking about the couple in these different fields of observation and in the interplay between them. The aim of the book is to present perspectives on couple dynamics in different settings, and for this purpose I use the format of bringing together different levels—work with individuals, couples, and groups—as in another book in this Series, on psychotic processes (Bell & Novakovic, 2013). Theories derived from psychoanalytic work with individuals are applied in thinking about couple dynamics. Relevant here are ideas about the “internal couple”, the individual’s unconscious phantasies of the parental couple, and the impact of these phantasies on the couple relationship. These ideas draw on Bion’s (1962a) theory of containment and Klein’s (1932) observations about the combined parental figure—the internal parental couple in a loving and creative, or hateful and destructive, intercourse. The “couple” in the individual’s internal world and phantasies about the parental relationship on the pre-oedipal and oedipal level, ranging from part-object to whole-object relations, are discussed by Kernberg, Hinshelwood, Halton & Sprince, and Morgan-Jones (chapters 1, 3, 8 and 9). Britton (chapter 2) focuses on problems in sharing psychic space that stem from difficulties in early containment, and Hinshelwood (chapter 3) considers the forms of linking by containing the rigid fixations of roles and functions, and a more fluid containment in the couple. States of mind in the individual can fluctuate between primitive and more mature ways of relating, and the dynamics in the couple can fluctuate accordingly. The nature of partners’ interaction with each other impacts on their experience of themselves, the other, and their relationship. Kernberg, Balfour, Novakovic, and Hewison (chapters 1, 4, 5, and 6) focus on the various dimensions of the couple relationship and some common difficulties that couples experience: their love and aggression, problems in sharing physical

introduction

3

and mental space, their experience of having a child, their sexual and emotional intimacy, their joint enactments, and the processes of projective identification in couple relationships. Vincent, Halton & Sprince, and Morgan-Jones (chapters 7, 8, and 9) explore the pairing dynamics, twinship, and two- and threeperson relating in a group and the group’s experience of the couple. The ideas developed in these chapters derive from observations made in different modalities and fields, ranging from group analysis, psychotherapy groups for couples, organizational consultancy, and group relations conferences to social dynamics of pairing in the celebrity cult. The authors, in making links between the group and the couple or the pair, draw on theories about intrapsychic and group dynamics. These various fields of observation shift the focus between figure and ground on micro- and macro-levels. Grotstein (2003) thinks that Bion’s development of Klein’s ideas in his work with groups allowed him to begin to conceive of “the individual self and the group self as being overlapping characteristics of everyone” (p. 11). Torres (2010a) refers to Bion’s “binocular perspective”, which aims to integrate in a psychosocial framework body and mind, personal and social, and the complex relationships between internal and external objects that are “mediated by the subjective motivations and needs of each individual in a social field” (p. 59). The shifts of focus from the “couple” in the individual and the individuals in the couple to the couple in the group can be seen as an exploration of the links between the individual self and the couple self in different settings, and as a movement towards this “binocular perspective”. Kernberg (chapter 1) discusses the interplay of love and aggression in a couple relationship and postulates that intimacy unavoidably stirs up ambivalence in oedipal and pre-oedipal relations. The longing to become a couple can express a need for a loving identification with one’s parents and their roles. It can also express a need to repair past relationships or to repeat aggressive and sadistic interactions by inducing the partner to engage in their preoedipal and oedipal conflicts. Kernberg discusses various aspects of discontinuities and splitting in the couple relationship, and the direct and reverse triangulation manifest in partners’ unconscious phantasies of being the excluded party by the dreaded oedipal rival or their partner, and the compensatory revengeful phantasies of

4

introduction

excluding the oedipal rival or the partner. When primitive object relations predominate, the couple relationship becomes rigid and repetitive, and the sadistic interactions reinforce the identification with the primitive superego. Britton (chapter 2) points out that in analysis, as in marriage, people share psychic space. He discusses the difficulties of sharing mental space in two categories of narcissistic patients. The borderline syndrome, which Britton refers to as “adherent narcissistic disorder”, is characterized by the patient’s inability to separate. There are “two people with only one mind”, and there is a need to possess and colonize the other. The schizoid personality, or the detached narcissistic disorder patient, treats the other as if he or she were of no importance and excludes the other from his or her internal world. These different narcissistic defences stem from failure in early containment and function in an effort to avoid the catastrophe of integrating different points of view. A difference of views in analysis or in a couple relationship is dreaded and is experienced as a malignant misunderstanding and an annihilating attack. Hinshelwood (chapter 3) considers Klein’s ideas of the early Oedipus complex and the phantasies of combined objects, which, he suggests, “remain active in the deeper layers of us all”. The phantasies of a combined parental couple provide something like a template for different experiences of couples. Hinshelwood discusses Bion’s development of Klein’s ideas, particularly his theories of containment and basic assumptions, which are defensive formations in groups against the early primal scene. The individual can become a particular function for the group, but the group can also provide an experience of the parts coming together to form a capacity to think. Hinshelwood draws a parallel between distributions of the functions of the mind in the group and in the couple. The couple, like the group, can constitute a whole mind between them or can resort to defensive use of the other. Balfour (chapter 4) explores the complexity of the couple therapy situation and the multiple transferences: the partners’ individual and joint transference to the therapist, and the transference between the partners, including the therapist’s countertransference. Balfour considers the various developmental positions that the couple can occupy: “the qualities of the oedipal couple that they have in their minds”, whether the couple have a psychic space

introduction

5

for thinking or engages in enactments, and the extent and quality of projective identification in the relationship. The defensive and repetitive nature of the couple transference interaction or enactment is explored. The couple enactments are viewed as a form of “acting in” in the therapy situation and in the couple relationship. Balfour argues that in couple therapy the couple enactment is “centre stage” and indicates how the partners usually relate to each other. Novakovic (chapter 5) presents a couple who were involved in repetitive arguments. The focus is on the more primitive aspects of the couple’s relationship and their joint enactments, manifest in their quarrels. The couple were engaged in a verbal interchange, but the language was used as a form of action, to act out and evacuate distressing experiences. Both partners had problems in tolerating disturbing feelings, and consequently they projected and evoked these feelings in each other. This chapter explores the couple’s anxieties and defences, and various functions of the couple’s recurring arguments: the enactment of aggression and sadistic attacks, arguments as a defence against psychotic anxieties, persecutory guilt, losses they could not mourn, and the contact they had with each other while quarrelling provided a protection from the shared experience of abandonment. Hewison (chapter 6) describes a couple’s experience of becoming parents. This couple were not prepared for the arrival of their baby. Both partners had difficulty in relating to more than one person at a time, and the birth of their baby faced them with an “oedipal crisis”. The baby was experienced as spoiling some of the “good things” in the couple, and their transition from being a couple to becoming parents was painful and frustrating. Hewison points out that a “couple can be isolated from another person, parents cannot” and that becoming parents involves a multigenerational relationship. This couple were able to make use of therapy, develop more flexible ways of relating, both as a couple and as parents, and work through their experience of “being under siege” from their baby. This particular experience in the couple relationship of being under siege, relevant for both partners, resonated with their early experiences. Vincent (chapter 7) discusses the movement in the group from couple dynamics and two-person relating to family dynamics and

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introduction

three-person relating, and the consequent feelings of depression, grievance, or anger about this shift. Vincent considers three-person, or three-object, relating to be an achievement in the development of the group analogous to Britton’s triangular space. For a group to become a group-as-a-whole and an established work group with a “wider and richer potential of experience”, the group needs to go through a process of mourning the loss of the intimacy that occurs in the move from two-person to three-person relating. However, “a good-enough psychotherapy group” is able to work analytically with itself. It is characterized by being able to shift back and forth between two- and three-person relating and has a capacity to explore these changes and experiences in the group. Halton & Sprince (chapter 8) observe primitive and changing perceptions of the couple in organizational settings. They discern four distinct images of the parental couple in Klein’s observations. They locate the fused persecutory couple and the warring c­ ouple within the paranoid-schizoid position, while the differentiated ­couple and the benign couple reflect a move towards the depressive position. Halton & Sprince point out how Bion’s development of Klein’s ideas of the fused persecutory couple, which evokes anxiety about the disintegration of the group, “provides a stepping stone from individual dynamics through group dynamics to organizational dynamics”. Halton & Sprince explore the nature of the anxieties generated in an organization that has a couple working together as employees. They discuss the destructive impacts on the organization when the anxieties about a fused persecutory couple or a warring couple predominate. Morgan-Jones (chapter 9) considers the love and hate of the couple in the social group, the love and hate of the internalized parental object, and the love and hate between the couple in relation to their internalized parental objects and internalized attitudes from the social group. He draws on Bion’s ideas about the latent protomental level in the group underlying the basic assumptions where the physical and emotional cannot be differentiated. ­Morgan-Jones explores the “interrelatedness between bodily experience”, the experience of belonging to a body bigger than one’s own, and how the couple relates “across the skins or contact barriers between individual, group, and community”. He refers to Bion’s pairing dynamic, the group’s desire for a pair in the

introduction

7

hope that the couple will produce a child and preserve the group and to Kernberg’s illustration of the group’s hatred and envy of an adolescent couple in love, for their rebellion and rejection of the family and social groups. As shown in this brief outline, the contributors to this book bring a range of perspectives deriving from different aspects of theory and from their therapeutic practice. The insights they provide should stimulate further thoughts about how these multiple levels influence and constitute each other.

CHAPTER ONE

Aggression, love, and the couple Otto F. Kernberg

I

n this chapter, I examine the interplay of love and aggression in the couple’s emotional relationship. With sexual intimacy comes further emotional intimacy, and with emotional intimacy, the unavoidable ambivalence of oedipal and preoedipal relations. We might say, to put it in a condensed and simplified way, that the man’s ambivalence toward the exciting and frustrating mother from early childhood on, his deep suspicion of the teasing and withholding nature of mother’s sexuality, become issues interfering with his erotic attachment, idealization, and dependency on the woman he loves. His unconscious oedipal guilt and his sense of inferiority to the idealized oedipal mother may result in sexual inhibition with or intolerance of a woman who becomes sexually free and toward whom he may no longer feel reassuringly protective. Such a development may perpetuate the dichotomy between erotized and desexualized idealized relations to women, a dichotomy typical of boys in early adolescence. Under pathological circumstances, particularly in men with narcissistic pathology, the unconscious envy of mother and the need to take revenge against her may bring about a catastrophic unconscious devaluation of the woman as the longed-for sexual object, with consequent estrangement and abandonment. 9

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otto f. kernberg

In a woman who did not have an early satisfactory relationship with a mother who tolerated her daughter’s sexuality, the unconscious experience of a hostile and rejecting mother who interfered with the little girl’s early development of bodily sensuality, and, later on, with her love for her father, may result in exaggerated unconscious guilt about sexual intimacy in conjunction with commitment in depth to a man. In these circumstances, the little girl’s normal shift in object from mother to father is unconsciously distorted, and her relationship with men becomes a sadomasochistic one. If a narcissistic personality structure evolves, the girl may express her intense unconscious envy of men by a defensive devaluation of the men who love her, by emotional distancing, and perhaps by a narcissistically determined promiscuity which parallels that in narcissistic men. The experience of an unavailable, sadistic, sexually rejecting, or seductive and teasing oedipal father will exacerbate these early conflicts and their effects on a woman’s love life. Granting the frequency of severe unconscious oedipal guilt and of narcissistic defenses derived from both oedipal and preoedipal sources, we might well ask what factors are responsible for creating and maintaining a successful relation between a man and a woman. Two standard and conventional answers are that social mores protect the structure of marriage, and insofar as cultural and social structures now seem to be disintegrating, the institution of marriage is in danger; and second, that “mature” love implies friendship and comradeship, which gradually replace the passionate intensity of initially romantic love and assure the continuity of the couple’s life together. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, the longing to become a couple and thereby to fulfill the deep unconscious needs for a loving identification with one’s parents and their roles in a sexual relationship is as important as the aggressive forces that tend to undermine intimate relationships. What destroys passionate attachment and may appear to be a sense of imprisonment and “sexual boredom” is actually the activation of aggression, which threatens the delicate equilibrium between sadomasochism and love in a couple’s relationship, both sexual and emotional. But more specific dynamics come into play as emotional intimacy develops. The unconscious wish to repair the dominant

aggression, love, and the couple

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pathogenic relationships from the past and the temptation to repeat them in terms of unfulfilled aggressive and revengeful needs result in their reenactment with the loved partner. By means of projective identification, each partner tends to induce in the other the characteristics of the past oedipal and/or preoedipal object with whom he or she experienced conflicts. Projective identification is a primitive yet prevalent defense mechanism that consists in the tendency to project an impulse onto another person, fear of the other person under the influence of the projected impulse, the unconscious tendency to induce such an impulse in the other person, and the need to control the other person under the influence of this mechanism. If early conflicts around aggression were severe, the possibility arises of reenacting primitive, fantastically combined mother–father images that carry little resemblance to the actual characteristics of the parental objects. Unconsciously an equilibrium is established by means of which the partners complement each other’s dominant pathogenic object relation from the past, and this tends to cement the relationship in new, unpredictable ways. Descriptively, we find that couples in their intimacy interact in many small, “crazy” ways. This “private madness” (to use André Green’s [1986] term) can be both frustrating and exciting because it occurs in the context of a relationship that may well have been the most exciting and satisfactory and fulfilling one that both partners could dream of. To an observer, the couple seem to enact a strange scenario, completely different from their ordinary interactions, a scenario that, however, has been enacted repeatedly in the past. For example, a dominant husband and a submissive wife become transformed, respectively, into a whining little boy and a scolding schoolmarm when he develops the flu and requires nursing; or a tactful and empathic wife with a direct and aggressive husband may become a paranoid complainer and he a reassuring, motherly caretaker when she feels slighted by a third person; or an orgy of throwing dishes may disrupt a couple’s harmonious life-style from time to time. This “union in madness” ordinarily tends to be disrupted by the more normal and gratifying aspects of the couple’s relationship in the sexual, emotional, intellectual, and cultural realms. In fact, a capacity for discontinuity in their relationship plays a central role in maintaining it.

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Discontinuities This capacity for discontinuity, described by Braunschweig and Fain (1971, 1975) and by André Green (1986, 1993), has its ultimate roots in the discontinuity of the relationship between mother and infant. According to Braunschweig and Fain, when a mother becomes unavailable to her baby because she has returned to her husband as a sexual partner, the infant eventually becomes aware of this fact. Ideally, a woman can alternate her two roles and move easily from being a tender, subtly erotic, affectionate mother to her infant and child to being an erotic sexual partner to her husband. And her child unconsciously identifies with her in both roles. The mother’s discontinuity triggers the earliest sources of frustration and longing in the infant. Also, through identification with mother, the infant and child’s capacity for discontinuity in his or her intimate relations is triggered. According to Braunschweig and Fain, the infant’s autoerotism derives from repeated sequences of gratification alternating with frustration of his or her wish for fusion with mother: masturbation can represent an object relationship before it becomes a defense against that relationship. André Green regards this discontinuity as a basic characteristic of human functioning in both normality and pathology. Discontinuity in love relations, he proposes, protects the relationship from dangerous fusion within which aggression would become paramount. The capacity for discontinuity is played out by men in their relationships with women: separating from women after sexual gratification represents an assertion of autonomy (basically, a normal narcissistic reaction to mother’s withdrawal) and is typically misinterpreted in the—mostly female—cultural cliché that men have less capacity than women for establishing a dependent relationship. In women, this discontinuity is normally activated in the interaction with their infants, including the erotic dimension of that interaction. This leads to the man’s frequent sense of being abandoned: once again, in the cultural cliché—this time a male one—of the incompatibility of maternal functions and heterosexual eroticism in women. The differences between men and women in the capacity for tolerating discontinuities also show in their discontinuities regarding love relations, as Alberoni (1987) has pointed out: Women usually

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discontinue sexual relations with a man they no longer love and establish a radical discontinuity between an old love relationship and a new one. Men are usually able to maintain a sexual relationship with a woman even if their emotional commitment has been invested elsewhere, that is, they have a greater capacity for tolerating discontinuity between emotional and erotic investments and for a continuity of erotic investment in a woman, in reality and in fantasy, over many years, even in the absence of a real ongoing relationship with her. Men’s discontinuity between erotic and tender attitudes toward women is reflected in the “madonna–prostitute” dissociation, their most typical defense against the unconsciously never-abandoned, forbidden, and desired oedipal sexual relationship with mother. But beyond that dissociation, profound preoedipal conflicts with mother tend to reemerge in undiluted ways in men’s relationships with women, interfering with their capacity to commit themselves in depth to a woman. For women, having already shifted their commitment from mother to father in early childhood, their problem is not the incapacity to commit themselves to a dependent relationship with a man. It is, rather, their incapacity to tolerate and accept their own sexual freedom in that relationship. In contrast to men’s assertion of their phallic genitality from early childhood on in the context of the unconscious erotization of the mother–infant relationship, women have to rediscover their original vaginal sexuality, unconsciously inhibited in the mother–daughter relationship. One might say that men and women have to learn throughout time what the other comes prepared with in establishing a love relationship: for men, to achieve a commitment in depth, and for women, sexual freedom. Obviously, there are significant exceptions to this development, such as narcissistic pathology in women and severe types of castration anxiety of any origin in men. Discontinuity in the love relation is also fostered by the mutual projection of dictates from the superego. Projecting onto the sexual partner the sadistic aspects of an infantile and/or oedipal superego may lead to masochistic submission and unrealistic, sadomasochistic distortions in the relationship, but also to a rebellion against the projected superego, precisely by means of the temporary separations that characterize normal discontinuities in the love relationship. A violent rejection of or attack on the guilt-inspiring object

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may result in temporary freedom from a projected, sadistic superego. That relief, paradoxically, may permit love to reemerge. The central function of discontinuity explains why some couples may have a steady and durable relationship together with (in spite or because of) the aggression and violence enacted in their love life. If we categorize nonorganic psychopathology roughly into neurotic, borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic categories, partners coming from different categories of pathology may establish varying degrees of equilibrium that stabilize their relationship while permitting them to enact their world of private madness contained by protective discontinuities. For example, a neurotic man with an obsessive personality married to a borderline woman may unconsciously admire what he senses as her freedom to give vent to violent aggressive outbursts. She may be protected from the real and feared consequences of her aggressive behavior by the discontinuity achieved in the splitting processes she imposes as the most natural way of relating within the marital relationship. Her obsessive husband may be reassured by the self-containing nature of aggression that he unconsciously fears in himself. But another couple with similar pathology may destroy itself because the obsessive man cannot tolerate the woman’s inconsistency, and the borderline woman cannot tolerate the persecutory nature, as she experiences it, of her obsessive husband’s rational persistence and continuity. Throughout many years of living together, a couple’s intimacy may be either strengthened or destroyed by enacting certain types of unconscious scenarios that differ from the periodic enactment of ordinary, dissociated past unconscious object relations. These specific, feared, and desired unconscious scenarios are gradually built up by the cumulative effects of dissociative behaviors. The enactments may become highly destructive, sometimes simply because they trigger circular reactions that engulf the couple’s love life beyond their intentions and their capability to contain them. I refer here to the enactment of oedipal scenarios representing the invasion of the couple by an excluded third party as a major disruptive force, and to various imaginary twinship relations enacted by the couple as a destructive centripetal or estranging force. Let us explore these latter relations.

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Narcissistic conflicts manifest themselves not only in unconscious envy, devaluation, spoiling, and separation but also in the unconscious desire to complete oneself by means of the loved partner, who is treated as an imaginary twin. Didier Anzieu (1986), in developing Bion’s ([1961]) work, has described the unconscious selection of the love object as a homosexual and/or heterosexual completion of the self: a homosexual completion in the sense that the heterosexual partner is treated as a mirror image of the self. Anything in the partner that does not correspond to that complementing schema is not tolerated. If the intolerance includes the other’s sexuality, it may lead to severe sexual inhibition. Behind the intolerance of the other’s sexuality lies the narcissistic envy of the other gender. In contrast, when the other is selected as a heterosexual twin, the unconscious fantasy of completion by being both genders in one may act as a powerful cement. Bela Grunberger (1979) first pointed to the unconscious narcissistic fantasies of being both genders in one. It has frequently been observed that after many years of living together partners begin to resemble each other even physically; observers often marvel at how two such similar persons found each other. The narcissistic gratification in this twinship relationship, the wedding, we might say, of object love and narcissistic gratification, protects the couple against the activation of destructive aggression. Under less ideal circumstances, such twinship relations may evolve into what Anzieu (1986) has called a “skin” to the couple’s relationship—a demand for complete and continuous intimacy that first seems an intimacy of love but eventually becomes an intimacy of hatred. The constantly repeated question “Do you still love me?” reflecting the need for maintaining the couple’s common skin, is the counterpart of the assertion, “You always treat me like that!” signaling a shift in the quality of the relationship under the skin from love to persecution. Only the opinion of the other really counts in protecting one’s safety and sanity, and that opinion may turn from a steady stream of love to an equally steady stream of hatred. Unconsciously enacted long-range scenarios may include wishfulfilling fantasies, unconscious guilt, the desperate search for a different ending to a feared and endlessly repeated traumatic

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s­ituation, and an unwillingly, unwittingly triggered chain reaction that disrupts the internal sequence of the scenario. For example: a woman with a hysterical personality structure, an oedipal fixation to an idealized father, and profound prohibitions against sexual involvement with him is married to a man with a narcissistic personality structure and an intense unconscious resentment against women. He selected her as a desirable heterosexual twin and unconsciously expected her to be totally under his control as a support for his narcissism. Her sexual inhibition frustrates his narcissism and causes him to seek extramarital satisfaction; her disappointment in the oedipal father triggers, first, ineffectual masochistic submission to her husband and, later, a masochistic and (for the same reason) sexually gratifying love affair with a forbidden man. Her abandonment of her husband makes him aware of his dreaded dependency on her, denied by his previous treatment of her as a slave, while her now fully awakened sexual response in a threatening but unconsciously permitted relationship (because of its nonmarital nature) brings about her acceptance of her own genital sexuality. Husband and wife reencounter each other with a better understanding of their mutual needs. It is true that both underwent psychoanalysis and, without treatment, probably would not have been able to reconstruct their relationship. He unconsciously needed to provoke her to become the rejecting mother, thus justifying retrospectively, so to speak, his devaluation of her and his search for a new idealized woman; she unconsciously needed to reconfirm the unavailability and disloyalty of father and to pay the price of a socially dangerous situation as a condition for responding sexually to a man who was not her husband.

Triangulations Direct and reverse triangulations, which I have described in earlier work (1988), constitute the most frequent and typical unconscious scenarios, which may at worst destroy the couple or at best reinforce their intimacy and stability. I use direct triangulation to describe both partners’ unconscious fantasy of an excluded third

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party, an idealized member of the subject’s gender—the dreaded rival replicating the oedipal rival. Every man and every woman unconsciously or consciously fears the presence of somebody who would be more satisfactory to his or her sexual partner; this third party is the origin of emotional insecurity in sexual intimacy and of jealousy as an alarm signal protecting the couple’s integrity. Reverse triangulation defines the compensating, revengeful fantasy of involvement with a person other than one’s partner, an idealized member of the other gender who stands for the desired oedipal object, thus establishing a triangular relationship in which the subject is courted by two members of the other gender instead of having to compete with the oedipal rival of the same gender for the idealized oedipal object of the other gender. I propose that, given these two universal fantasies, there are potentially, in fantasy, always six persons in bed together: the couple, their respective unconscious oedipal rivals, and their respective unconscious oedipal ideals. If this formulation brings to mind Freud’s (1954) comment to Fliess, “I am accustoming myself to the idea of regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved” (letter 113, p. 289), it should be noted that his comment was made in a discussion of bisexuality. My formulation arises in the context of unconscious fantasies based on oedipal object relations and identifications. One form that aggression related to oedipal conflicts frequently takes (in clinical practice and in daily life) is the unconscious collusion of both partners to find, in reality, a third person who represents a condensed ideal of one and a rival of the other. The implication is that marital infidelity, short-term and long-term triangular relationships, more often than not reflects unconscious collusions between the couple, the temptation to enact what is most dreaded and desired. Homosexual as well as heterosexual dynamics enter the picture because the unconscious rival is also a sexually desired object in the negative oedipal conflict: the victim of infidelity often identifies unconsciously with the betraying partner in sexual fantasies about the partner’s relationship with the jealously hated rival. When severe narcissistic pathology in one or both members of the couple precludes the capacity for normal jealousy—a capacity that implies a certain achievement of toleration for oedipal rivalry—such triangulations easily become enacted.

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The couple that is able to maintain its sexual intimacy, to protect itself against invasion by third parties, is not only maintaining its obvious conventional boundary but also reasserting, in its struggle against rivals, its unconscious gratification of the fantasy of the excluded third party, an oedipal triumph and a subtle oedipal rebellion at the same time. Fantasies about excluded third parties are typical components of normal sexual relations. The counterpart of sexual intimacy that permits the enjoyment of polymorphous perverse sexuality is the enjoyment of secret sexual fantasies that express, in a sublimated fashion, aggression toward the loved object. Sexual intimacy thus presents us with one more discontinuity: discontinuity between sexual encounters in which both partners are completely absorbed in and identified with each other and sexual encounters in which secret fantasied scenarios are enacted, thus carrying into the relationship the unresolved ambivalences of the oedipal situation. The perennial questions “What do women want?” and “What do men want?” may be answered by saying that men want a woman in multiple roles—as mother, as baby girl, as twin sister, and, above all, as adult sexual woman. Women, because of their fateful shift from the primary object, want a man in fatherly roles but also in motherly roles—as father, baby boy, twin brother, and adult sexual man. And at a different level, both men and women may wish to enact a homosexual relationship or to reverse sexual roles in an ultimate search for overcoming the boundaries between the sexes that unavoidably limit narcissistic gratification in sexual intimacy: both long for complete fusion with the loved object with oedipal and preoedipal elements that can never be fulfilled.

Perversity and boundaries Basically, the experience of the boundaries between the genders can be overcome only when the symbolic destruction of the other as a person permits the use of his or her sexual organs as mechanical devices without emotional involvement. Sadistic murder is the extreme but logical consequence of an effort to penetrate another

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person to the very essence of his or her existence and to erase all sense of being excluded from that essence. Under more moderate circumstances, perversity—the recruitment of love in the service of aggression—transforms deep sexual intimacy into a mechanization of sex, which derives from the radical devaluation of the personality of the other, an observation first made by Fairbairn (1954). Perversity in the sexual encounter may be illustrated by the developments typical of couples engaged over a period of time in group sex. After six months to a year of consistent participation in multiple polymorphous perverse activities, their capacity for sexual intimacy (and, for that matter, all intimacy) ends (Bartell, 1971). Under these circumstances, the oedipal structure tends to become dismantled. This is in marked contrast to the stabilizing effects on a couple of an actual triangular love relationship. An equilibrium is reached that permits the acting out of nonintegrated aggression by splitting love from aggression in the relationship with two objects; acting out unconscious guilt over the oedipal triumph is achieved by maintaining a love relationship that is less than fully satisfactory. In the couple’s emotional relationship, a corresponding perversity may be observed in long-standing sadomasochistic relationships wherein one of the partners enacts the functions of the perfectionistic and cruel superego, thereby gratifying his or her own sadistic tendencies through self-righteous indignation, while the partner masochistically expiates his or her guilt derived from oedipal and, more frequently, preoedipal sources. Or perhaps such a perverse equilibrium no longer involves the superego-sanctioned expression of aggression but is the enactment of more primitive sadomasochistic scenarios, with life-threatening types of aggression and primitive idealization of a powerful and cruel object without a moral dimension. One partner, for example, may agree to sterilization or even to actual mutilation or self-mutilation as symbolic castration. Primitive dissociative mechanisms may protect perversity within a stable equilibrium of the couple that reaches an extraordinary intimacy dominated by aggression. Activation of dissociated primitive object relationships in the interaction of the partners can create circular reactions that acquire a fixed quality, which the ordinary discontinuity in the couple’s

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relationship may no longer contain. For example, the rageful outbursts of one partner may evoke a response of righteous indignation and identification with primitive superego functions. This is followed by a masochistic submission of the first perpetrator to his or her partner, changing into renewed angry outbursts or an immediate reinforcement of rage as a secondary defense against unconscious guilt. These reactions may escalate until this dissociated primitive object relation becomes a recurrent feature in the life of the couple. Ethel Person (1988) has described a typical situation in which one partner has an extramarital relationship and defends himself or herself against feelings of guilt by provocative behavior toward the marital partner aimed at inducing a rejection by that partner and thus assuaging the existing guilt. This may lead to a result quite opposite to the one intended, finally destroying the couple. Generally, relentless aggression as an unconscious plea for acceptance and as the expiation of guilt triggered by that very aggression may not be contained by the partner.

Boundaries and time The boundaries separating the couple from its social environment protect the couple’s equilibrium, for good or otherwise. Extreme social isolation of couples with perverse developments in the sexual, emotional, and/or superego areas may gradually worsen the destructive relationship because the partners lack corrective interactions with the environment and lose their normal capacity to “metabolize” aspects of the aggression generated in their social interactions. Social isolation of extremely sadomasochistic couples may pose a danger to the masochistic partner. On the positive side, the normal boundaries protect not only the couple’s intimacy against triangular invasion from the surrounding social environment but also their “private madness,” the necessary discontinuities in their relationship. Certain common boundaries of couples become significant at different stages of the couple’s life. First is the relationship with their children, a subject too vast and complex to explore at this point, except to stress the importance of maintaining the bounda-

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ries that separate the generations. One of the ubiquitous manifestations of unconscious guilt over the implicitly rebellious and defiant quality of any intimate relationship (representing oedipal fulfilment) is the couple’s not daring to maintain firm boundaries of intimacy in relation to their children. The proverbial absence of a lock on the bedroom door may symbolize the parents’ unconscious guilt over sexual intimacy and their unconscious assumption that parental functions should replace sexual ones. This regressive fantasy, projected onto the children as a fear of their reactions to being excluded from the parental bedroom, reflects the underlying fear of identifying with the parental couple in the primal scene and the unconscious collusion between the two parents in abdicating from fully identifying with their own parents. Another boundary is with the network of couples that constitutes ordinary social life. Relationships with other couples are normally infiltrated with eroticism; among the friends and their spouses in unconscious collusion are the feared rivals and the desired and forbidden sexual objects. The teasingly exciting and forbidden boundaries among couples are the typical settings within which direct and reverse triangulations are played out. The boundary between the couple and the group is always a combat zone. “Static warfare” is represented by the group’s pressure to mold the couple into its image and is reflected in conventional morality—in ideological and theological ritualization of love, commitment, marriage, and family tradition. From this viewpoint, the couple that exists from early adolescence or even from childhood on, brought together by their relatives, sanctioned by universal benevolent perception, actually lives in a symbolic prison, although the couple may escape into a secret love relationship. The mutual temptations and seductions in the network of adult couples represent a more dynamic warfare, but also, at times, potential salvation for individuals and couples entrapped in relationships that are drowning in mutual resentment and aggression. The group needs the couple for its own survival, for the reassurance that an oedipal triumph, breaking away from the anonymous crowd, is possible. And the group envies and resents the couple’s success as contrasted with the individual’s loneliness in that anonymous crowd. The couple, in turn, needs the group to discharge its aggression into the environment. Projective identification not

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only operates within the couple but in subtle ways includes third and fourth parties as well. Liberman (1956) has described how the patient’s bitter complaints to the analyst about the marital partner may be part of a subtle acting out. The analyst becomes the repository of the aggression against the marital partner, and the patient withdraws into a “saved” relationship with the partner while abandoning the relationship with the analyst. This is a particular example of the more general phenomenon of the “lavatory” analyst, which Herbert Rosenfeld (1964) described. A couple’s intimate friends who may serve that function are often not aware that they have become the carriers of the aggression that would otherwise become intolerable for the couple. A couple that seems to be functioning well may evoke inordinate envy within unstructured social groups, such as extended large travel groups, political parties, professional organizations, or communities of artists. The envy that is usually kept under control by the rational and mature aspects of interpersonal relationships and friendships among a network of couples becomes immediately apparent in such groups. The couple’s unconscious awareness of this envy may take the form of guilt-ridden public mutual attacks to soothe those who are envious or external behavior of defiant total harmony while mutual aggression remains hidden from public view. Sometimes the partners manage to hide from others how close their relationship really is. And a third boundary, represented by the dimension of time, is the frame for both the full development of a couple’s life as such and the limited nature of that life because of death and separation. Death becomes an important consideration for couples in later years. Fear of aging and illness, fear of becoming unattractive to the partner, fear of becoming excessively dependent on the other, fear of being abandoned for somebody else, and the unconscious tendency to defy or deny the reality of time—for example, by reckless neglect of one’s physical health or that of the partner— may become the field within which aggression from all sources is played out. Here, concern and mutual responsibility derived from ego and superego functions may play a major role in protecting the couple’s survival, in contrast to the unconscious collusion with dangerous self-defeating patterns, as in neglecting illness or financial irresponsibility.

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Men may be particularly sensitive to the aging process in women, much more so than women in their relation to men, because of an unconscious connection between idealization of the surface of mother’s body as one origin of eroticism and fear of the content of mother’s body as an expression of unconscious projection onto her of primitive aggressive tendencies (Meltzer & Williams, 1988). This sensitivity may sexually inhibit men (and, insofar as they fear being sexually less attractive, also women) in advanced stages of their life, reactivating or reinforcing oedipal prohibitions against their sexuality. The affirmation of a couple’s sexual intimacy when they are advanced in age is a last test of their sexual freedom. The common denial of sexual life in the elderly is the final edition, so to speak, of the child’s efforts to deny the parents’ sexuality; it is also the final edition of the parents’ guilt associated with their own sexuality. Concern for the loved companion of a lifetime may become an increasingly important factor in mediating and controlling the couple’s enactment of dissociated aggression. The changes of power and authority related to changes in a couple’s prestige, income, and other developments having to do with profession and work not only may affect the emotional equilibrium but, paradoxically, may often represent the unforeseen effects of unconsciously determined factors. A classic example is the nurse who puts her husband through medical school, secure in her role as a maternal provider while gratifying his dependency needs. When he later is a successful physician, he resents his dependency on mother and searches for a relationship in which he is the dominant father to a little girl-mistress. His wife struggles with her resentment over the loss of her maternal function for him and the unconscious resentment toward powerful men (penis envy) activated by his professional success. Or a narcissistic man establishes a relationship with an adoring, inhibited, unsophisticated girl and stimulates her to study and work so that she can live up to his expectations for a narcissistic twinship, only to discover that her blossoming activates his deep envy of women and resentment of her independence. He subsequently devalues her, and their relationship is destroyed. But time does not operate only destructively. The search for reactivation of past conflicts to heal wounds (to use Martin Bergmann’s [1987] expression) may be successful in that love can be

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maintained in spite of the violence of mutual aggression; the survival of the couple may expose the fantastic, exaggerated nature of unconscious fears surrounding repressed or dissociated aggression. To be able to attack one’s partner sadistically and yet witness the survival of his or her love; to be able to experience in oneself the transition from relentless rage and devaluation to guilt, mourning, and repair—these are invaluable experiences for the couple. When sexual intimacy and pleasure incorporate the reparative efforts linked to such awareness, guilt, and concern, then sexual excitement and emotional intimacy increase, together with the couple’s commitment to joint responsibility for their lives. Emotional growth implies an expanding identification with all the stages of life, bridging the boundaries that separate age groups. The accumulated experiences of a shared life include mourning the loss of one’s parents, of one’s youth, of a growing past left behind, of a future becoming remorselessly restricted. A joint life becomes the repository of love, a powerful force that provides continuity in the face of the discontinuities of daily existence. In later life, faithfulness to the other becomes faithfulness to the internal world. The growing awareness of the limitation of all relationships through death highlights the importance of this internal world. Denial of one’s personal death is limited by awareness of the necessary end, at some point, of the joint life of the couple, which initiates a mourning process that again enriches life lived together and after the death of the person one loves. The surviving member carries the responsibility for the continuation of the life lived together. The woman whose husband has died and who joins their old network of couples with a new husband activates this mourning process within the entire group.

Pathological role fixation I have described perversity in love relations that destroys the sexual couple because aggressive elements predominate and control sexual excitement, because sadomasochistic patterns dominate and control the emotional relationship, and because persecutory and sadistic aspects of mutually projected superego functions also

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dominate and control. An additional form of perversity is the freezing of the relationship in a single pattern of an unconscious complementary object relationship from the past. Normally, enactments from the past interplay with realistic relations. An illustration of a typical flexibility in the partners’ interactions would be the husband’s unconscious shift from the role of the sexually dominant and excited male penetrating his wife and symbolically enacting the loving and sexually accepting father to the role of the satisfied infant who has been nourished by mother, symbolically represented by the woman who has given him the gift of her orgasm. He may then become the dependent child of a maternal woman who tucks him in, feeds him, and puts him to sleep or he may actively shift into a fatherly role toward a dependent daughter by repairing a broken lamp, which she cannot (or pretends she cannot) do. Or the wife may shift from the role of adult sexual partner to dependent daughter of a protective mother, or to that of the motherly woman who feeds her little boy-man. Or she may become the guilty little girl who is seduced into sex by a sadistic father; or she is “raped” in her fantasy during sexual intercourse, thus confirming her lack of guilt for sexual enjoyment; or she may ashamedly exhibit herself, thus expiating her sexual pleasure while obtaining the gratification of being admired by the man who loves her. Or a man may shift from guilt-ridden little boy being scolded by a perfectionistic mother to the envious little boy watching the mysteries of adult female concerns and interests. Or he may become resentful of a woman’s dedication to her profession or to their baby because he feels like a neglected child, the counterpart to a woman’s unconscious resentment of her husband’s professional success because it reactivates early envy of men. These and other role enactments may be mutually gratifying because they express both love and hatred—the integration of aggression within a loving relationship. But these unconscious collusions may break down, and aggression may be expressed by unconsciously “fixating” the self and the sexual partner in particular roles, leading to the typical scenarios that become the conscious subject matter of chronic marital conflict: the dependent, clinging, love-hungry woman and the narcissistic, indifferent, self-centered man; the dominant, powerful, and controlling woman who wants an adult man as her partner and feels frustrated by

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her insecure, childlike boy-man, having difficulty perceiving the self-perpetuating nature of their relationship. Or the “sex-hungry” man who cannot understand the limited sexual interest of his wife. And, of course, the guilty partner and the accusatory one in all their variations. Rigid role fixations usually reflect enactments of underlying dissociated scenarios and an incapacity to accept or carry out the functions of discontinuity related to oedipal guilt or narcissistic fixations. One may ask whether simply a lack of harmonious correspondence of unconscious enactments may bring about clashes resulting from contradictory expectations—a man trying to be a protective father collides with a competitive mother; or both partners are frustrated because each has dependent expectations. Clinically, however, the unconsciously fine attunement in the couple’s unconscious awareness of each other’s disposition makes it abundantly clear to them how each will be perceived by the other. What appears to be simple misunderstanding is usually determined by unconscious needs. The assumption that the couple’s problems result from their failure to communicate touches only the surface. Sometimes communication may serve to enact barely controlled aggression, which does not mean that efforts to communicate needs and expectations are not helpful. But when deep unconscious conflicts come into play, the communicative process itself may be contaminated by them, and open communication may serve only to accentuate the conflicts. A final word about couples vis-à-vis social and conventional values. Dicks (1967) has described the complex relationship of the couple’s conscious aspirations, their cultural values, and those of the surrounding social world. I believe that there are no “objective” rules about what values should determine a couple’s relationship, particularly their way of dealing with conflicts. The ideological dimension of all cultures is, I believe, implicitly directed against a couple’s intimacy. It is in the very nature of conventional culture to attempt to control the basically rebellious and implicitly asocial nature of the couple as it is perceived by the conventional social environment. The couple’s independence from social conventionality may therefore be crucial to its survival under conditions of conflict—and their nonconventionality may also be essential in

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their therapist’s role with them. It is true, of course, that when extreme distortions in the enactment of dissociated object relations from the past threaten the physical or emotional integrity of one or both partners, ordinary social reality may protect the partners from a dangerous, even life-threatening deterioration. Such conditions, however, apply to only a minority of cases. There is a large majority of couples whose unconscious conflicts take on the surface mimetism of ideological battle cries of the moment, with further complications in their relationship as conventional standards become rigid slogans that reduce their flexibility to deal with their conflicts.

CHAPTER TWO

Narcissistic problems in sharing space Ronald Britton

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s Freud demonstrated, it is our psychic reality that makes us neurotic, and we easily confuse it with material reality; nowhere is this more so than in our phantasy-rich perception of physical space. It is easiest to see how mental space is experienced as physical space when it is at its most problematic. Two simple examples: a woman alone in her own large apartment feels she is suffocating; it is full of unwelcome thoughts and unbidden memories. She opens the window; she opens the door; she moves from room to room; she moves the furniture; finally, she takes flight from her apartment and walks the street. This happens to her every day. A man standing at a railway station begins to see all the objects on the platform receding from him. He feels smaller, the distances greater, and the emptiness around him larger; the platform seems endlessly long and his legs short and weak. His morbid thoughts preceding this alarming experience had been of his isolation in life, his powerlessness to change things, and his fear of not being able to reach or contact anyone. We live and move in physical space, yet it is also psychic space; its perceived shape and size is an extension of our state of mind. One thing in common between living with someone and being in analysis is the problem of sharing thoughts and sharing space. 29

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There are many times in analysis when patient and analyst have problems sharing ideas, but there are also times when there is a real problem about sharing the consulting-room. Similarly, when married we find it difficult at times to share the same space; sometimes it is the bedroom, possibly the kitchen, and probably even more often the desk or study. Whether in marriage or analysis, the physical space we share is also psychic space. It is a room housing the mind of the other, and it is furnished by the thoughts of the other. It is not just the material reality of the room that confines us or intrudes on us; it is the psychic reality of the other person investing its contents with talismanic significance—that territory imbued with another’s ideas, that room invested with someone else’s good intentions, that couch or bed saturated with the other’s desires, that domestic arrangement requiring acquiescence. The great sixteenth-century French essayist Montaigne built himself a separate tower adjoining the chateau that he shared with his wife. In this tower his study was the top room of the tower, and it could only be reached from below. We, like the guide who showed it to us, speculated as to whether Montaigne climbed through the window at night to venture across the narrow, exposed parapet that connected it to his wife’s bedroom. In contrast to Montaigne in Renaissance France, Edward Hopper, the twentiethcentury American painter, living in a time and in a culture more given to celebrating “togetherness”, shared a studio with his wife who was also an artist. However, in order to stay together they eventually resorted to painting a broad white line across the floor of the studio which neither partner was permitted to cross. Having seen Montaigne’s house with his architectural solution to the problem of preserving private mental space, I was curious to see if the great self-explorer had anything to say about it himself, and indeed he did. In his essay, “On Three Kinds of Relationships”, he wrote about his “tower”. The three kinds of relationships he describes are those with men, those with women, and those with books: My library is in the third story of a tower. . . . I spend most of the days of my life there, and most of the hours of the day. I am never there at night. . . . From this room I have three open views. And its free space is sixteen paces across . . . it is a little difficult

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of access and out of the way, but this I like, both for the benefit of the exercise and for its keeping people away from me. It is my throne, and I try to rule here absolutely, reserving this one corner from all society, conjugal, filial, and social. Everywhere else I have just verbal authority, which is essentially doubtful. Miserable, to my mind, is the man who has no place in his house where he can be alone, where he can privately attend his needs, where he can conceal himself! [in Cohen, 1958, p. 262]

This is not as severe as the “tower isolation” that the poet Rilke prescribed for himself in Muzot as necessary in order to finish his great work The Duino Elegies. For the whole of the winter of 1922 he did not allow himself as much as the company of a dog lest its attentive love should distort his self-reflection. Nevertheless, though less extreme, Montaigne’s words suggest that he had a need for time and space uncontaminated by the presence of other people, sufficient to make us wonder what might lie behind it. I think he gives us a clue in his essay “On the Power of the Imagination”. He wrote: I am one of those who are very much affected by the imagination. Everyone feels its impact, but some are knocked over by it . . . the sight of another’s anguish gives me real pain, and my body has often taken over the sensations of some person I am with. A perpetual cough irritates my lungs and my throat. . . . As I observe a disease, so I catch it and give it lodging in myself. [in Cohen, 1958, p. 36]

So under the title “imagination” he describes acquisitive projective identification as a compulsive phenomenon that robs him of his own well-being and, indeed, of his own identity and transfers to him the malady of the other. In this respect, he brings us to the psychological area that I think is most relevant for the exploration of the difficulties of sharing space: what we might describe as mental mixing. Montaigne goes further in his essay and gives one of the best descriptions of acquisitive and attributive projective identification operating simultaneously that I have met. In acquisitive identification, the phantasy is I am you; in attributive identification, it is You are me. Simon Thomas was a great physician. . . . I remember meeting him at the house of a rich old man who suffered with his lungs.

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When the patient asked him how he could be cured, Master Thomas answered that one way would be for him to infect me with a liking for his company. Then if he were to fix his gaze on the freshness of my complexion, and his thoughts on the youthful gaiety and vigour with which I overflowed, and if he were to feast his senses on my flourishing state of health, his own condition might improve. . . . What he forgot to say was that mine might at the same time deteriorate. [p. 37]

In order to explore his own thoughts, Montaigne provided himself with a room in a tower where he could be alone, adjoining but not part of his large marital home. His mind, it seemed, had to be free of his wife’s thoughts, which would have invaded his mental space had they been in the same building. This is something that analysis and marriage have in common: in both, the relationship with the other person is impregnated with transference significance. This means that in marriage, just as in analysis, from the time that the relationship really begins we lose the ability to treat the partner as rationally, dispassionately, or decently as we can other people. It is a relationship we invest with a significance transferred onto it—from the past, from an internal world of dream figures, from unrealized ideal aspects of ourselves that we seek in others, or from an aspect of ourselves we repudiate and attribute to others. The last two of these categories, in which something of the self is repudiated and attributed to the other, is a narcissistic objectrelation; its obverse is one in which the attributes of the other are acquired by identification. These modes of relating by projective identification cause more than a little trouble in both analysis and marriage. When they are the dominant mode of relating, it is fair to say that the individual is suffering from a narcissistic disorder. The principal clinical feature of narcissistic disorders in analysis, as I wrote in chapter ten [in Britton, 2003], is that such individuals cannot have an ordinary analysis. This may well not be evident beforehand but is so from the moment analysis begins, though it may be a while before it dawns on the analyst. They cannot share the intimate mental space of analysis. There are, instead, two apparently opposite modes of being in analysis that, nevertheless, I believe, have a common underlying problem. One I call adherent narcissistic disorder, which is usually referred to as the borderline syndrome. The other I call detached narcissistic disorder, which may

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often be described as schizoid personality. In the first, the adherent type, there appears to be no space for separate thought, difference of opinion, or independent action. In the other, there appears to be no access to the psychic life of the other; it is not like Hopper’s white line on the floor, but a brick wall dividing the common room. Before exploring these states of mind further, I would like to say a word about those who feel that they might just as well save themselves the trouble and stay out of either analysis or serious relationships. If we choose to live with someone in an intimate relationship— whether of the opposite or the same sex, whether legal spouses or not—we are confronted with the problems of sharing space, physical and mental. In these days of informal sexual arrangements, some, prompted by a claustrophobia of marital space, imagine they can avoid the spousal living-room by inhabiting indefinitely the ante-room. However, they are already operating in just the same way that they would on the other side of that threshold. On that side, they imagine, lies their parents’ country, and they do not want to live in it. I am not recommending that in a spirit of cultural or family patriotism they should want to live there, but simply to point out that, for better or for worse, they already do. They are like those people who continue well into middle age to imagine that they are living on the threshold of life. In analysis, similarly, they regard what is taking place as the dress rehearsal and not the performance; they do not realize that this is their own particular way of having analysis. Similarly, it is their own particular way of being married. They may be tempted to imagine vaguely that the “real” analysis or the “real” marriage will take place later, perhaps with another as-yet-unknown person in some unspecified future time. So, in marriage or in analysis, they tell themselves they are still on the threshold. This, paradoxically, can lead to interminable unsatisfactory relationships or, in a similar way, to interminable analyses. What has never properly begun cannot properly be ended. This is one reaction to the fear of being taken over, incorporated, invaded, or even annihilated by another person’s mind. There are other defensive solutions commonly adopted to deny this difficulty, but all of them draw attention to the problem. On the evidence of their analyses, the sort of individuals I have just been referring to do not have as much to fear as they imagine. In other words, they are already tolerating the shared mental space

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better than they believe they can. It is, however, difficult for them, unpleasant at times, and certainly no pre-lapsarian Garden of Eden. If they can reconcile themselves to the fact that they are having a “marital” relationship, that this is it, they can decide whether this particular person is “good enough” or not, in Winnicott’s sense of the term. Why do they hesitate, you might ask, if they do not have as much to fear as they think? Why, if they are already having to tolerate sharing a life with another person, do they not want to realize it? I have come to believe that they are afraid of themselves: that is, they are afraid of their own reaction to disappointment, frustration, and ambivalence. Not only do they hope to find someone better even though they have found someone good enough, they want to believe that they are better than they are even though they are no worse than most other people. This latter quality of moral greed they share with a group of people who ostensibly seem very different because they demand so little and put up with so much. They function by lowering their expectations of others and exaggerating their own capacities for tolerance. They are given to martyrdom and are anxious to avoid any situation that might provoke in themselves hostility, jealousy, and above all envy. They are greedy for virtue and intolerant of any failing in themselves, and consequently by projective identification they locate weakness or negativity in the other. They often put up with unreasonable or even sometimes outrageous behaviour from their partners. In other words, they expect a great deal of forbearance from themselves and very little from their partners. An unconscious sense of moral superiority is more important to them than what they might get from another person. The love and approval of their own superego is more valued than that of any partner. My experience with such cases in analysis is that they do not have excessive quantities of envy, hostility, or rage lying in wait internally, but they think that even modest amounts of these undesirable, ubiquitous attributes are intolerable in them. In these analyses it is crucially important to show to the patients how much they underestimate the analyst’s capacity to bear negative feelings and injustice, to show them their double standards—that is, their belief that they can put up with things that they cannot expect the other person to do. Unconsciously they regard themselves as morally and emotionally superior and therefore see their task as

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supporting the narcissism of the analyst while suffering neglect themselves. However, though I might describe this as unconscious devaluation of others and overestimation of the self as a form of narcissism, such individuals do not have the severe problems in sharing intimate space that afflicts people with narcissistic disorders. The patients I have just been speaking of can occupy the position and role of a patient in analysis in an everyday sense; they can freeassociate and use the analytic-room in an ordinary way. However, there are those who cannot do that. What is quickly revealed is that being in an analysis is a major problem for such patients and for their analyst. I would like to emphasize that being in analysis is the problem—being in the same room, being in the same mental space. Instead of there being two connected, independent minds, there are either two separate people unable to connect or two people with only one mind. These two situations could not be more different from each other in analysis. What they have in common is their inability to function in analysis in an ordinary way and their terror of the integration of separate minds. In the first group, the other is treated as of no significance; in the second, the patients cannot commune without making the significant other an extension of themselves. In the first situation, the analyst cannot find a place within the psychic reality of the patient; in the second, the analyst cannot find a place outside it. The first I describe as narcissistic detachment, the second as narcissistic adherence. I shall give a brief clinical example of both of them.

Narcissistic detachment (thick-skinned patients) The patient was seeking analysis after a period of marital therapy at the suggestion of the therapist and with the prompting of his wife. He told me this and added with a disarming frankness that his problem was intimacy: “I am no good at intimate relations my wife tells me, and I am sure she is right.” He also let me know in the consultation that he had suffered from depression of a kind in which he would wake sick with a sense of terror, despair about life

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in general, and his own uselessness. When he was young and still religious, he believed that he was damned and beyond redemption and that the usual religious remedies, of confession, contrition, and so forth, would not work for him. When I suggested that he might feel the same about analysis, he quickly agreed that he could not imagine it helping or changing him in the slightest, “but I have to try it if you are willing to have a go”, he said. The problem of shared analytic space quickly asserted itself when he arrived for the first session. We agreed a time, and he accepted the analytic conventions, as he saw them, of lying on a couch for fifty minutes. But he conveyed that he could have done so equally willingly if I had suggested he should stand on his head for fifty minutes. “Enduring things”, I suggested, “is something you know you can do without them having any effect on you.” He agreed with this and offered me several convincing examples from his childhood of his fortitude protecting him from being changed by the regimes inflicted on him. Once we got under way, the problem was mine. Though I could without too much difficulty understand him, I could not find a means of sharing his mental space, of getting into contact with him. I was the “outsider” in this analysis. The patient would claim that he was not really involved in the analysis, and he sympathized with me for having to endure such an unappreciative patient when presumably I would like to be thought important and my ideas appreciated. My needs, therefore, were worth his consideration but he could not do anything about it. I was not empty-minded, however, outside the realm of his attention. He had a gift for communicating to me what difficulties faced him and what anxieties troubled him, so that I was vividly aware of his very real suffering and predicament. If I drew attention to these, he politely scoffed at me for taking them seriously. He would then leave the session on an upbeat note of “begone dull care” and, with a wave, say “see you tomorrow”. I was left, in other words, “holding the baby”. This applied also to his memories—to his recollections of cruel experience, of his revelations of painful humiliations and considerable deprivation. He treated my opinion that he had suffered an unhappy childhood as eccentric. If I then reminded him of the recollections he had disclosed in the previous session, he would quickly say he had a terrible memory and

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forgot everything from one day to another. So I was the only one who now knew of the existence of the suffering child. My patient had gone missing. When I suggested to him that he had emptied his experiential self into me and then left the two of us behind, he responded by describing to me a story he had worked on. It had a title, but, he said, “it could have been entitled the story of a missing person”. In it, a character was exploring a residence and could not establish whether someone lived there or not. The character could see the outline of the missing person’s life and the details of the person’s day from the traces left behind, but no presence. The essence of the story was that of emptiness shaped by absence, the shape of a missing person. In analysis, as in marriage, absence appears to solve the problem of presence. However, it requires a place from which to be absent. In order to be an absentee husband you need a wife, or to be an absentee patient you need an analyst, or to be a runaway you need a home to run away from. To have a missed session, you need to have a session arranged. Largely through the use of my own countertransference as a source of information about my missing patient, we were able to get some idea of the problems that led to his “psychic retreat” to the periphery of his own life. Here on the edge he could define himself as the outsider, as the man who would not fit in. The cost of this identity was exclusion. The passport to inclusion was to be defined by the other’s presuppositions and preconceptions; the price for entry into the mind of the other was to be misperceived. The sacrifice to be made to secure a place indoors was to be caged within the limiting framework of the other’s comprehension of the world. As a child, he had found a hideaway he could be in unknown to the family. His dreams made clear how significant this secret space was and how it was the forerunner of other private spaces, culminating in the creation of the study where he worked. Here he created in his own writing his own versions of himself and placed these in a variety of contexts of his own choosing that accurately mirrored his internal world. And a bleak and lonely place it usually was in these creations. I was to get inside knowledge of this bleak terrain because it was where he placed me in the analysis. We met there eventually in a shared moorland-like mental landscape that felt reminiscent to me of that in which Wordsworth met the­­

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leech-gatherer when driven to despair by Coleridge’s “Ode to Dejection”. I would like to think that our encounter might have had a similar therapeutic effect on him as that which Wordsworth ascribed to the leech-gatherer: “. . . to find / In that decrepit Man so firm a mind” (Wordsworth, 1936, p. 157). This, then, is the first of the two clinical situations that I said I would describe, one I would call narcissistic detachment, when the analyst cannot find a place within the mental space of the patient. The other I am calling narcissistic adherence, which is one where the analyst cannot find a place outside it. Rosine Perelberg (2003) has described in her own words two contrasting transference syndromes that correspond to the two I have just referred to. She writes of “patients who create an empty space in the consulting room ... [and] leave the analyst with a sense of exclusion from the patient’s internal world. At the other extreme there are patients who fill the consulting room. . . . The experience is that the analyst is over-included in the patient’s world. . . . and one feels consistently over-involved in the patient’s analysis.” The first of these, I think, corresponds to my categories of thick-skinned narcissistic patients, the second to the thin-skinned or borderline patients described in Belief and Imagination (Britton, 1998).

Narcissistic adherence (thin-skinned patients) The two situations could not appear more different, and yet I believe they are both organized to avoid the same catastrophe. This catastrophe would, it is feared, follow if what are believed to be the incompatible mental worlds of the self and the other were brought together—if two different psychic realities were to occupy the same space; in other words, if the patient’s psychic version of the analysis was to be integrated with the analyst’s version. The parallel in a marriage would be a fear of one partner’s version of the marital relationship being integrated with the other’s. Underlying this is a profound fear of the integration of the subjective with the objective. Since this integration would be the aim both of analysis and of marital therapy, the individuals I am describing are fearful of the very process itself and take steps to deal with it. The patient I

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have just described deals with it by taking psychic leave of absence from the analysis or marriage; the second, which I am about to discuss, does so by taking possession of it. This occurs in the most concrete way. The consulting-room and its contents are colonized by the patient, who projects into it the mental furniture of his or her inner world. Not only does the analyst find him/herself to be forcefully assigned a character from the inner world of his patient, but the physical space of the consulting-room is treated as if it were an extension of the patient’s mind. Great exception or considerable anxiety is therefore generated by any changes in its arrangements or any movements of the things in it. The analyst no longer feels free to make use of his or her room any more, just as he or she no longer feels free to use his or her own words. The patient’s understanding of the analyst’s words, which is likely to be idiosyncratic, is the only one that exists and is reacted to accordingly. At such times the countertransference phantasy of the analyst is that if he or she adopts the psychic reality of the patient, his or her own psychic reality will be annihilated, that his or her own identity as an analyst will be lost. In a complementary way, the patient believes that if there is an effort made by the analyst to assert his or her version of their shared situation, this will crush the patient’s sense of self. The only way out of such an impasse is for the analyst to recognize the nature of his or her own countertransference anxiety and to struggle to accommodate both his or her own and the patient’s psychic reality. To do this, the analyst needs to re-establish inwardly another relationship with him/ herself other than that with his patient. The analyst needs a third presence, which can only be found within a session by occupying a third position of self-observer without vacating his or her place in the dyadic interaction with the patient. This, when achieved, I have called the triangular space and suggested that it begins life within the triangular relationships of the Oedipus situation (Britton, 1989). It is this difficult work that needs to be done by the analyst. Otherwise, the analyst either succumbs and falls into a passive acceptance of the patient’s psychic reality, or tries to impose his or her own. Since it is the patient’s fear of this that created the problem in the first place, this is fruitless. The disentangling of such situations has to begin, as I have suggested, within the analyst’s mind. In other words, we have to provide within ourselves the mental

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counterpart to Montaigne’s study while remaining in touch with the palpable flux of subjective interaction.

Malignant misunderstanding and the need for agreement In chapter 4 of Belief and Imagination I tried to explore the mental catastrophe that is anticipated will follow from the integration of two different points of view. From the transference it seems that the basic fear is of malignant misunderstanding. By this I mean an experience of being so misunderstood in such a fundamental and powerful way that one’s experience of oneself would be eliminated and, with it, the possibility of the self establishing meaning would be annihilated. It is, I think, a fear of a return to primordial chaos, which corresponds to Bion’s notion of nameless dread that he posits follows a failure of containment. Bion gives two accounts of the production of nameless dread from a failure of maternal containment in infancy (1959, 1962a). In both, the uncomprehended becomes the incomprehensible. One could say that there is a dread of the namelessness of everything. If in early infancy this failure of understanding is experienced as an attack rather than a deficiency, a force is believed to exist that destroys understanding and eliminates meaning. One sees this repeated in the transference when the failure of the analyst to understand the patient precisely is experienced by the patient not simply as a deficiency of the analyst but as an attack on the patient’s psychic integrity. When there is a desire for understanding coupled with a dread of misunderstanding, there is an insistent, desperate need for agreement in the analysis and annihilation of disagreement. I have come to believe that there is a general rule arising from anxiety about misunderstanding which applies in all analyses: it is that the need for agreement is inversely proportional to the expectation of understanding. When expectation of understanding is high, difference of opinion is tolerable; where expectation of understanding is fairly high, difference is fairly tolerable; when there is no expectation of understanding, the need for agreement is absolute.

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I asked the question of whether there is something in the temperament of some individuals that predisposes them to this particular development or response to trauma. Is there anything in the endowment of the individual that might encourage them to believe that an independently existing object will destructively misunderstand them? Is there an innate factor in the infant that increases the risk of a failure of maternal containment, and if so what might it be? I answered it by suggesting that there was allergy to the products of other minds, analogous with the body’s immune system. This system is central to our physiological functioning, as our physiological integrity is at stake; we cannot survive without it, and yet it is often the source of pathology. Is the same true of our psychic functioning? It certainly appears to be in our social functioning, where the annihilation of the perceived alien is commonplace. The not me or not like me recognition and response might fulfil a similar psychic function as it does in the somatic. And just as the immune system sometimes makes for physiological trouble between mothers and babies, as in the familiar Rhesus incompatibility problem, so perhaps might there be troublesome psychic immunity responses. Are there psychic allergies, and is there sometimes psychic autoimmunity? In the realm of ideas and understanding, we do seem to behave as if we have a psychic immune system, fearful for the integrity of our existing belief systems whenever we encounter new and foreign mental protein. Analysis by producing a shared mental space exposes these difficulties, and I have been suggesting that another great test bed for such phenomena is in the spousal chamber: sharing not simply physical space but also mental space with another person.

Conclusion We often experience mental space as physical space, so that problems in sharing it may be manifested as claustrophobia and agoraphobia. When we form marital partnerships or have analysis, we commit ourselves to sharing intimately not just physical but

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mental space. The psychic reality of one person overlaps with that of another. For all of us, this poses a threat; for some people, it seems like an insuperable problem. I suggested that the basic fear in exposing our own inner selves is of being misunderstood, and that misunderstanding can be felt to be malignant; I suggested in Belief and Imagination that the need for agreement is inversely proportional to the expectation of understanding (1998, pp. 54–58). The need for absolute agreement requires tyranny and obedience or identification. I suggested that problems of this sort arise from failure of infantile containment and that factors in either baby or mother lead to a psychic allergic response analogous to immune incompatibility.

CHAPTER THREE

Couples and primitive processes R .D. Hinshelwood

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n this chapter I consider a contribution that individual psychoanalysis can make to the understanding of the dynamics of couples. The chapter begins with Bion’s review of his group theories (his basic assumption ideas) once he had qualified as a psychoanalyst in 1948. He recast the basic assumptions in terms of Melanie Klein’s (1946) theory of the psychotic anxiety of annihilation, the primitive defences of splitting, projection, and introjection, and the primitive notion of part-objects and the split-off parts of the self. Conceptualizations from individual psychoanalysis appear to have relevance for the interpersonal dynamics of groups and couples. Clearly Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex is one that he explored in several texts—in Totem and Taboo (1912–13), Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921c), The Future of an Illusion (1927c), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a). But a more recent understanding of primitive unconscious processes gives an alternative perspective. It arises from Melanie Klein’s (1946) theory of schizoid mechanisms derived from Karl Abraham and Bion’s further conceptualizations once he became an individual psychoanalyst in the years following his initial interest in group dynamics. It is not my aim to test theory against the reality of c­ linical work, 43

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but to enlarge upon these conceptions and comment on their application to working with couples.

The early phase of Bion’s group ideas Bion, in his pre-psychoanalytic phase, initially ignored Freud’s writing on social psychology, and he addressed group dynamics with ideas based to a considerable extent on Wilfred Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (Trotter, 1916) and the work in the 1930s at the Tavistock Clinic on a bio-psycho-social integration (Hinshelwood, 2013). Both of these were heavily biological, stressing the instinctual nature of group processes, and represent a pre-psychoanalytic phase of his thinking. Under these influences, and that of his first analyst, John Rickman, Bion adopted the idea of a “group mentality”. A group as a whole could have a sort of group mind. He conducted study groups at the Tavistock Clinic from January 1946 onwards and wrote up his impressions as a series of seven papers, “Experiences in Groups I–VII” (published between 1948 and 1951, and reprinted in Bion, 1961). In the course of this work (specifically, “Experiences in Groups III”, Bion, 1949a), he moved away from the original concept of a group mentality and developed the notion of a valency by which individuals instinctively link up with each other. Three characteristic valencies— “pairing”, “fight–flight”, and “dependency”—emerged as implicit assumptions within the group; Bion called them basic assumptions. Bleandonu (1994, p. 43) speculated that the basic assumptions derive from J. A. Hadfield, Bion’s teacher at the Tavistock Clinic in the 1930s. However, the three specific assumptions bear some resemblance to the elements of the Oedipus complex and emerged in the midst of Bion’s psychoanalytic training (1945–1950). However, this elaborate theorizing was heavily revised by Bion when he wrote, in 1952, “Group Dynamics: A Re-view”, for the collection of papers by various Kleinian authors published in the year of Melanie Klein’s 70th birthday. Bion’s revision cast the instinctual theorization of groups into more psychodynamic terms that came from Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic work on primitive anxieties and mechanisms. She categorized these as forming

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a “deeper layer” of the unconscious. They underlie Freud’s neurotic, oedipal level and are characterized by alternation between two mental states described by Klein as the “depressive position” (Klein, 1935, 1940) and the “paranoid-schizoid position” (Klein, 1946). Her theories led to a very different conception of the human mind. Whereas Freud had emphasized the mind as essentially in conflict and, centrally, the conflicts of the Oedipus complex, Klein described the deeper layer as essentially preoccupied with a fear of disintegration and annihilation. The propensity for the mind to come apart and degenerate into incoherence has been investigated by Klein’s followers ever since. Bion was in analysis with Melanie Klein between 1945 and 1953, and it was her ideas of the deeper layers—comprising the anxiety of annihilation and the primitive defence mechanisms of splitting, introjection, and projective identification—to which Bion turned when, in 1952, he reconsidered the “Experiences in Groups” papers. But first what were those ideas Bion had picked up from Klein by the early 1950s?

The “psychotic” level Because these processes and phenomena are regarded as deeper in the unconscious, as they occur at an early developmental period and concern the early formation of the ego rather than how the ego deals with its conflicts, Klein came to refer to her deeper layer as the “psychotic level”. It is supposedly psychotic because it is concerned with anxieties about the loss of a coherent mind, rather than the presence of conflict within a coherent mind. Klein’s ideas originated in her analyses of young children. In addition, she drew on ideas from her second analyst, Karl Abraham. Abraham (1924) had himself added to Freud’s ideas via his own work with psychotic patients, particularly manic-depressives (see Sanfeliu, 2014). Interestingly, Abraham had an important role in this respect, in Freud’s conflict with Jung. Jung had greater experience with psychotic patients when working in the Burghölzli hospital, while Freud’s expertise was largely with ambulant neurotic patients. So Abraham, who had worked at the Burghölzli with Jung and had, in

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fact, initially learned psychoanalysis from Jung, brought to Freud that clinical experience with psychosis. Klein reinterpreted Freud’s Oedipus complex in terms of those deeper concepts, emphasizing what she described as the early stages of the Oedipus complex (Klein, 1932, 1945). Klein had first become interested in becoming a psychoanalyst around 1918 or shortly after, just when Freud published his paper on the Wolf Man case (Freud, 1918b [1914]). In that paper Freud postulated for the first time the idea of the primal scene. He evolved the idea that the Wolf Man had been traumatized by actually witnessing his parents’ intercourse at the age of 18 months. It is a plausible assumption that this case was a formative influence in Klein’s early development as a psychoanalyst, because in her early papers and in her book, The Psycho-Analysis of Children (Klein, 1932), she dwells on the child’s perceptions of the parental coitus. Klein’s argument was that the Oedipus complex is truly active, as Freud described, but hidden behind it and embedded within it is the phantasy life of infants at a much earlier developmental age than Freud had claimed. And this implies that the infant experiences the oedipal players in terms of the conceptions that Abraham (1924) had described. Abraham had developed a detailed understanding of the pre-genital phases of development and the primitive processes of introjection and projection, and he greatly advanced the notion of “objects”. In Abraham’s thinking, objects may be internal as well as external and can be experienced in a partial form (part-objects) as well as whole. Abraham’s early death in 1925 left Klein to pursue his line of thinking. The term “part-object” indicates a specific kind of experience felt by an infant. At an early stage of development, phantasies have the quality of a true reality, in accordance with Freud’s view of the “omnipotence of thoughts” (Freud, 1909d, p. 235). The young infant, not yet fully grasping reality, is swayed by phantasies: for instance, as a result of feeling satisfied after a feed, it experiences an object—say, a breast—that feeds and has an intention to feed and satisfy. Alternatively, when left hungry, as when a feed is delayed, the infant believes that there is a breast—or object—that frustrates and intends to frustrate by taking time before offering milk. In reality, these are two aspects of the same nurturing parent, but in the infant’s experience the view is that there are two quite separate

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and polar opposite objects, partial versions of mother, and the one not integrated with the other. Moreover, note that since the sensations of the initial satisfactions and frustrations are felt within the body, the infant will believe that these objects that intend to cause its experiences, are in there too—and causing the experiences from inside its tummy. Other functions too—keeping warm, cuddling, skin contact, and so on—are felt as quite separate, and similarly polarized into benevolent and malign objects. Such beings that are conceived inside are at times “projected” outside, and one or other will be identified with the actual mother. Klein used these conceptions to try to capture the remote experiences of the early infant mind. These early and unrealistic phantasies are the means by which the infant is supposed to make sense of its sensations. In the case of the Wolf Man, by 18 months of age—though, of course, it may have been earlier—he had experienced the parents in primitive forms of union. The meaning the infant constructs in its phantasies may be varied, based on feeding, defecating, and so forth, and it colours the experience of the two objects combined. In the infant’s mind the two objects are combined as a couple that is mutually feeding or fighting—based more on the infant’s own bodily preoccupations than on observation of reality. Above all, the infant is challenged by feeling excluded from the couple and may succumb to phantasies of violently splitting them or intruding in various ways upon their exclusiveness. The prominent feelings of exclusion from the couple (Britton, 1989) lead to new omnipotent phantasies of splitting the two partners apart. These phantastical forms of union give wildly unrealistic interpretations of parental intercourse and the Oedipus complex. Klein thought of this as the early stages of the Oedipus complex (Klein, 1945). And despite years of intense debate and disagreement, Klein held that these phantasies, though arising early and with such a lack of reality, nevertheless remain active in the deeper layers of us all. They do not prevent more realistic understanding from developing, but they are a source of continuing pain and prompt forms of evading that pain. They endow us with sets of deeply unconscious phantasies about the nature of couples. However, Klein explored further; by 1946, she was understanding new phenomena, and in particular she described in object

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r­ elations terms the range of defence mechanisms against very early anxieties: these she called the schizoid mechanisms. They are called schizoid because they involve “splitting”—but not just splitting objects into opposite parts and separate functions, nor just splitting the couple, but the extraordinary idea of splitting the self. In the early 1940s there was considerable debate among many analysts on the integrity or fragmentation of the ego (Glover, 1943; Winnicott, 1945) and on Freud’s own posthumously published paper on splitting of the ego (1938 [1941]). The position considered here is that the ego in its most immature form splits in accord with the objects to which it relates: when the breast is feeding, the ego feels good, so negative aspects disappear out of sight, leaving a state of bliss that so impresses the outside observer. In contrast, the ego can exist in a single-minded state of hate and rage, screaming blue murder, as we sometimes say, when it is not being fed and is hungry and in need; and then it is the “good” side of the ego that appears to be annihilated. The self has these various alternative states of being, and they can be said to be partial states, corresponding to the partial awareness of the object (breast) that feeds or does not—or all the other kinds of attention a nurturing parent has to give. In her classic paper in 1946, Klein described the case of an adult patient who described feeling full of painful anger and jealousy towards people more successful than himself. The analyst then interpreted that he must be including the analyst in his anger and jealousy. Immediately there was a telling reaction: the man suddenly looked blank; he could remember what had been said, but he no longer had any emotions. He felt that the issues he had been talking about did not matter. Klein presented this vignette because she thought it illustrated a schizoid mechanism (in an adult) when a part of the ego that feels emotionally and painfully engaged simply disappears. It is split off—a schizoid mechanism—or, in her words, is “annihilated” (for a more detailed discussion of this kind of splitting, see Hinshelwood, 2008). With the understanding of these specifically schizoid mechanisms, Klein supplemented the idea of part-objects with the concept of separated, seemingly annihilated parts of the self. Subsequently, Kleinians have made extensive investigations of these states of the

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ego, which arise from its loss of integrity or coherence, and what happens to the lost parts of the self. Confusingly, those lost parts of self and the part-objects may not always be distinguishable; sometimes the term part-object is used loosely to cover both, as if there were an incoherent melee of debris. Those muddled conglomerations are sometimes called “bizarre objects” whose origins may be difficult to fully determine. They were of special interest to the generation of Kleinians who investigated people with schizophrenia during the 1950s, because schizophrenia appears to be just such a mental condition characterized by a confusion of parts of self and other. In severe psychotic states, the parts remain a jumble in a mind that is more like a scrapheap of parts of objects and of the ego. Moreover, along with these processes of splitting, the mechanism of projection sometimes evacuates some of that mental state with a disruption in the patient’s sense of reality of what the external world really consists of. However, similar processes occur in states much less severe than psychosis. The split-off part of the self continues in existence but, extraordinarily, in someone else’s mind instead! This is important in understanding the problems of a couple, where the disturbance is likely to be less, and one can see the projective processes more easily. Klein eventually named this more coherent export into another mind “projective identification”. The term has been widely used and explored and now covers numerous divergent meanings. In particular, it is seen as a defence against various experiences of painful anxieties, which include primary anxiety at the psychotic level—the fear of fragmentation and going to pieces. However, one use of projective identification is to deny separation from the object and any dependence on it. This is common as a means of coping with the exclusiveness of the primal scene, and so projection into the couple, with various identifications with them, occurs just as Freud described in the Wolf Man case. The projection of self (or parts of the self) into an object serves to confuse identities so the distinction between them is less clear, at least unconsciously, and in consequence there is less pain from feeling separate. The aim of defending against psychotic anxiety is different from the defences of repression and reaction-formations on which Freud

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had concentrated as those employed against the oedipal anxieties. The defences at the psychotic level are problematic: they defend against the anxiety, but they also provoke it. Psychotic anxiety in Klein’s terms is the fear the ego has of disintegration, fragmentation, and, ultimately, of annihilation. That dismantling of the ego is exactly what happens with the defences against the anxiety— splitting, projection, and projective identification divide the ego and distribute it inside and outside the self. This is the dilemma of the ego: in some situations it may only have defences against annihilation that actually enhance the fear of it. The ego’s sense of identity—its sense of self—can become, in a compensatory manner, very rigid, as if trying to prevent any threat at all to its integrity and flexibility. In that situation the ego is extremely dependent on an external object that can represent the coherence of the ego, the containment of the anxiety of annihilation and death, and the maintenance of sophisticated mental functioning. That external object may be a group (or the couple); but therein lies a problem. The group has to represent the continuity and coherence the individual finds so fragile in himself—while at the same time the group is made up of separate individual entities, potentially resembling the feared fragmentation. Also, a couple may be recruited to be that rigidly held-together entity that one or both partners need. The situation is one in which an individual has in mind (unconsciously) a couple that is intruded upon and split up, so that the individual is spared feeling excluded, while in reality he/she exists in a couple (or group) that they must sustain in a compensatory rigidity. There is not a proper continuity between the external situation and relations on the one hand—the rigidity—and, on the other, the phantasies that keep in mind a very different view—the intruded-upon and interrupted couple. Normally, there is a fluid interchange between internal and external realities, so that the primitive phantasies of self and other generated in relation to fears of annihilation are gradually ameliorated by the actual external situation. In other words, the consistency and moderateness of the actual objects tones down those objects held in phantasy; that process involves an internalization of the external situation. It is an “introjection” that exerts a mod-

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erating influence. However, where the pain of fragmentation or exclusion/separation is too great, introjection does not have the moderating effect, may be disruptive of the state of mind, or may provoke an enactment. Introjection is an important process that enables the inner reality of phantasy to approximate external reality. It is also a counterpart, in a sense, to projection. If a subject is projected into with the parts of someone else’s self, then, as the projectiles arrive, the subject may introject, in the sense of experiencing the feelings or performing the function of the projected part. So through this internalization, the subject is himself moderated somewhat by the external object and performs the function lost from the object’s ego.

Bion’s revised group dynamics The conceptualizations that Bion applied when he reviewed the group dynamics he had worked out in his series of “Experiences in Groups” papers (published between 1948 and 1951 and collected in Bion, 1961) attempt to grasp experiences that are very remote and unconscious, and therefore difficult to absorb and use (see also Bronstein, 2001; Hinshelwood, 1991, 1994a; Segal, 1964). They may seem obscure and perhaps even impenetrable. But that very remoteness may make them relevant when we are dealing with obscure and impenetrable problems. Bion’s revision of his group theories (1952, 1961) came towards the end of his own personal analysis with Klein (he finished his analysis in 1953). Bion joined the group of Kleinians conducting experimental psychoanalyses of people with schizophrenia and exploring the relevance of the conceptualizations of the psychotic level. However, his first step was a revision of his previous descriptions of group dynamics. He then attributed group processes to the so-called primitive or psychotic mechanisms (in a 1952 paper revised somewhat in New Directions in Psychoanalysis, 1955). He wrote, It will be seen from this description that the basic assumptions now emerge as formations secondary to an extremely early

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primal scene worked out on a level of part-objects, and associated with psychotic anxiety and mechanisms of splitting and projective identification. [Bion, 1961, p. 165]

In other words the basic assumptions—those instinctual valencies—are no longer biologically based. Rather, they are now seen as (largely unconscious) psychological experiences. Note that Bion is here using the term “part-object” to include also the parts and functions of the self. The lack of precision reflects the confusions of self and object that were so characteristic of the psychotic patients with whom he and others were working in the 1950s. So, despite the continuing fascination today with Bion’s original pre-psychoanalytic typology of three basic assumptions, he himself moved decisively away from them and came to see the observations he made as secondary to a regression to the underlying primitive experiencing of the psychotic level. The basic assumptions became psychological experiences rather than instinctual valencies, and aimed at managing the psychotic anxiety of annihilation. They also contrast with those anxieties connected with ordinary oedipal conflicts at the neurotic level that Freud had exposed. Bion continued, . . . approached from the angle of psychotic anxiety associated with phantasies of primitive part-object relationships, described by Melanie Klein and her co-workers, the basicassumption phenomena appear far more to have the characteristics of defensive reactions to psychotic anxiety, and to be not so much at variance with Freud’s views as supplementary to them. In my view, it is necessary to work through both the stresses that appertain to family patterns and the still more primitive anxieties of part-object relationships. In fact I consider the latter to contain the ultimate sources of all group behaviour. [Bion, 1961, p. 189]

In spite of his attempt to acknowledge Freud’s view of the group as family relations, Bion was categorical that psychotic anxiety and primitive defences are the “ultimate source” of all the behaviour in groups, and of groups. In other words, in Bion’s terms, the group is not so much a set of unconscious family relations as, in fact, a collection of parts— the parts being the separated functions of a mind. The individual becomes reduced to a particular function for the group: the mem-

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ory of the group, the scapegoat of the group. As a part (or function) in the group, in relation to other parts, they exist primarily in some relation to the whole mind—the whole group (or couple). At the unconscious level the group is therefore the part functions of each individual, set in some coherent relation with each other. Just as a team is, at the conscious level, a set of different roles that come together to do a complete task, so, at the unconscious level, a group is a set of mental functions that come together to accomplish some thinking task—and thus, in particular, to be a mind. The “group” implies an unconscious experience of the parts coming together to form a capacity to think and respond coherently, and this amounts to what Bion had earlier called a “work group”. So what constitutes a group at this level is its capacity to mobilize the mental functions in some coherent manner, and, moreover, to provide some reassurance against the fear of dissolution and annihilation. However, because the individual is no longer able to feel properly in existence, he/she comes at times to feel as if detached or split off from the group, and the group fails in its needed job of reassurance. Often, in the reality of group functioning, individuals do appear to play single functions: the destructive one, the guilty one, the lightning conductor that defuses everything, and so on. They can actually be these parts and these functions. The individual’s experience of the group can seem to be a collection of separate, non-communicating parts—and sometimes it does objectively take that form (see Hinshelwood, 1994a)! So it may resemble a member’s own worst fears of disintegration. A well-functioning group can weld the parts together—somewhat like a team—though sometimes rigidly in oppressive ideological conformity.

A couple illustration A marital couple can be a good example of these forms of group cohesion where separated functions are re-distributed between the partners. Such a married couple can also be seen as dividing up the functions of a mind between them: A wife, for instance, may force her husband to own feared and unwanted aggressive and dominating aspects of herself and will then fear and respect him. He in turn may come to

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feel aggressive and dominating towards her, not only because of his own resources but because of hers, which are forced into him. But more: for reasons of his own he may despise and disown certain timid aspects of his personality and by projective identification force these into his wife and despise her accordingly. She may thus be left not only with timid unaggressive parts of herself but having in addition to contain his. [Main, 1975, p. 58]

Here the two partners in the marital group divide up personality characteristics in a way that is unconsciously convenient to each. Thus, in effect, the couple constitute one whole mind between them. The strength of this type of partner choice is that each has found an “other” willing to accept their disowned parts. This perspective, which focuses on a kind of personality swapping, is quite different from one based on oedipal phantasies in which rivalry and conflict are mediated between the partners. Externalization and internalization that lead to the kinds of personality swapping in groups that Bion and others described is a counter-intuitive idea that challenges (at least in Western culture) our understanding of what an individual is. And so, perhaps, the idea of a “deeper layer” is apt, since our own anxieties about our integrity are so remote from awareness.

Containing In one of his typical moments of casual brilliance, Bion achieved a connection between the psychotic level on the one hand and Freud’s oedipal level on the other, and this has proved of great use in contemporary psychoanalysis, within and without the Kleinian school. Projection and introjection form a kind of psychological intercourse in which one thing goes inside another: it is a mental intercourse that corresponds to the bodily level of intercourse at which the Oedipus complex operates. Bion understood how the two levels conform to each other: a (bodily or mental) part of one person goes inside the body or mind of another. Thus, cleverly, he brought the primitive “psychotic” level in line with the oedipal “neurotic”

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one—both modalities are a containing type of intercourse, the difference being the developmental stage. Bion (1959, 1962a) postulated a general process of containing: not just coitus, in which the penis goes inside the vagina, but a mind inserting itself into another mind. It is also reflected in the infant sucking, in which the nipple goes inside the mouth. He therefore began to develop a general theory of linking based on this containing principle of one thing going inside another, including one mind inside another mind: for example, “If there is a mouth that seeks a breast as an inborn potential, there is, I believe, a psychological equivalent, i.e. a state of mind which seeks another state of mind” (Brenman Pick, 1985, p. 157). The rather more general notion of the intimate relations between container and contained has expanded the meaning of “projective identification” well beyond the pathological. It now represents a whole dimension of swapping experiences and functions, from mental evacuation at one end to conversational sharing at the other. However, a smooth containing function does not always happen. What might be called “failed containing” may and frequently does occur, and then there is a sense of being uncontained—that is, at a mental level, an unconceptualized experience. At its worst, Bion called this “nameless dread”. Failure is experienced as neither a space in one’s own mind nor the possibility of space in another’s mind, for something not yet understood or meaningful. Such a state is a kind of mismatch between the containing space and the thing to be contained. This mismatch may arise from influences from two directions, and Bion’s (1959) initial description mentioned two kinds of failures: (a) the experience of a contents that explodes the container; or, in contrast, (b) the experience of a container that crushes the life and meaning out of what it must contain. These states occur in society (Bion. 1970) and in therapeutic groups (Hinshelwood, 1994b), and probably in also couples. In the couple, the partners need to establish fluid, or rigid, methods of containing each other’s pains and passions. It is the most intense emotions that need the greatest containing capacity. And a team of only two is often quite small to provide that containing space for all the considerable intensity. Perhaps this is one reason why a marital couple at the core of a nuclear family is so intense and problematic.

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Further implications There are two important points that arise from this ubiquitous form of linking by containing. The first is clarification of how splitting is different from a more flexible assigning of roles. And the second is that the collusive re-distribution of personality characteristics based on defensive unconscious phantasies is driven by strong anxiety—a point that has implications for therapy. Each of these needs some further explanation. » Splitting and teamwork: A collusive defensiveness may not be the only method of assigning roles between the partners in a couple. Ordinary teamwork, for instance, is based on a more flexible appraisal of realistic personality characteristics, not on defensiveness. For example, it is best to accept anatomical differences and the reality of woman’s role as child-bearer (at least given the possibilities of medical science at present!). Maternal functions are not split off by the father, and he does not severely repudiate such a role (though maybe sometimes men do repudiate any motherliness in themselves). Instead, as we know, a man may frequently—probably invariably—have maternal resources, be able to perform motherly roles, and gain satisfaction from them. In this case the identification of an aspect of his personality is not severely and defensively split off with such force that it becomes a collusive reality for him and his partner. There are therefore two kinds of allotting of roles within a couple—one rigid, defensive, and omnipotent, the other flexible and reality-oriented. The first process is the primitive defence of splitting, which ends up with a denial and a repudiation of the function that is split off; the second is a discrimination between the different resources of the two partners based on realistic observations of each other. » Disintegration: Regarding the second point, the anxiety-driven nature of swapping personality characteristics, it is important to respect the reallocation of functions, even when defensive. The interpersonal process is driven by the fear of fragmentation and annihilation, and this feels intolerable to one or both—usually both—parties. Any attempt to simply dissolve the situation and encourage a normalizing of roles will raise an unconscious

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alarm that intolerable fears about survival will erupt. In this case, we need to understand that there is a profound anxiety that drives these misperceptions of self and each other. Indeed, progress will follow only if the necessary, more flexible containment of anxiety has occurred. Real changes in the unconscious roles can be expected, I would suggest, only after change in the management of the anxiety. Otherwise any potential change in one partner that becomes apparent, even unconsciously, is likely to be resisted by the other with a continuance of the status quo ante. The evidence from couples is that the rigidity of the roles is durable, even permanent, and that the process of redistribution may persist for decades. In the groups that Bion observed and worked with, he was surprised at the speed with which the redistribution of parts of the self was achieved. Unconscious roles and functions could be instantly adopted in his groups—a fact that seems likely to have contributed to his initial belief that group phenomena arise from instinctual sources.

In conclusion The contributions from individual psychoanalytic work enabled considerable conceptual developments to be made in understanding the dynamics of groups. The conceptualizations have more or less superseded not only Bion’s original idea of the basic assumptions, but also those of Freud’s model of groups as families. These recent developments seem very suitable for applying to couples as well: the example of the married couple given in the quote from Main (1975), earlier in this chapter is an example of aspects of personalities being re-distributed between the couple, in the way mental functions can be distributed among members of a group. Each partner literally “contains” aspects of the other. These descriptions rely on the idea that the mind may split itself into parts. It is no longer the experience of the object that is partial, but the self/ego may also feel divided into quite separate

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parts. The actual transport of one of the split-off parts of the self into another mind is fanciful, of course, but such fancies driven by the pressure of great anxiety can employ the “omnipotence of phantasy” not only to split the ego, but to engage with others as if it were a reality. Under such pressure it does become a reality for the individual, the group, and the couple. The situation is one in which matched unconscious phantasies trap the parties in restricted roles, as a static and rigid collusion takes over and threatens to be the very core of the bond between them. Not only are they restricted in the capacity to conceive of their own personalities as a whole, but they become rigidly bound to each other because of the need to use the other for this containing function. In this modern development of object-relations psychoanalysis, the notion of containing, especially, has been employed to expand Klein’s ideas of the early stages of the Oedipus complex. Certain patterns of marital couples emerge as possible configurations from the “psychotic” level of social interaction. No clinical material is presented to confirm or otherwise such patterns, though there is some evidence that these patterns are useful in understanding problems in group psychotherapy (see Hinshelwood, 1994b). It is not intended to suggest that the occurrences described here are the only basis for couple pathology, only to try to give a pointer towards the implications of this deeper level of anxieties and defences, and that they may be significant in the more difficult collusive problems found in couples. Couple therapy may not only be an important therapeutic intervention in its own right, but it can offer a specific arena for investigating the individual psychoanalytic conceptualizations contributed by Klein, Bion, and others.

CHAPTER FOUR

Transference and enactment in the “oedipal setting” of couple psychotherapy Andrew Balfour

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his chapter explores the central place of enactment in the transference situation of couple psychotherapy and its significance as a primary mode of communication of unconscious meaning in the session. In discussing this, I focus on a particular group of patients who have difficulty in sharing “psychic space”, which is a common presentation in couples coming for psychotherapy and is linked by contemporary writers to difficulties in the Oedipus complex. I am interested in how this may be enacted within the therapy and thinking about some of the conceptual and technical issues that arise. As part of this, I ask whether the oedipal configuration of couple psychotherapy—the presence of a couple and a therapist—might have particular significance for working with couples with such difficulties. Once [Freud] said: If you combine the resistance of your patient with the resistance of your patient’s husband (or wife), you are lost; don’t do it. [Grotjahn, 1965, quoted in Fisher, 1999b, p. 127]

After more than half a century of development in the field of psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy, can we say that such a pessimistic view is justified? It is perhaps an obvious point to

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begin with, to observe that couple psychotherapy is distinguished from other therapeutic modalities by the presence in the room of the relationship that the individual partners are coming for help with. Many things follow from this, not least the question of what this means for the place of “the transference” in couple work, which differs from individual therapy in so far as in the case of the latter, the “real-world” relationships of the patient are extraneous to the clinical setting: the relationship to be worked with directly is the transference relationship to the therapist. Working with the couple, the psychotherapist is faced with the transference relationship between the partners, as well as their individual and joint transferences to the therapist—and, of course, the therapist’s countertransference to the individuals and to the couple. Given the complexity of this clinical situation, how does the couple therapist maintain a focus upon the fine-grain detail necessary for understanding unconscious processes and meanings? How can one use the “laboratory” of the clinical session (Rustin, 2001) and the couple’s transactions with one another and with the therapist to infer deeper truths about the partners’ inner worlds and the ways in which these interact to form the relationship between them?

Transference and enactment in couple psychotherapy Throughout our lives we replay particular patterns of relationship within ourselves and with others. These are shaped developmentally through our projections, identifications, and introjections, as the lived atmospheres of our early lives become part of our internal worlds, shaping—and being shaped by—our relationships throughout our development. At best, our adult relationships allow us to continue to develop. At worst, we replay troubled patterns as earlier difficulties are brought into and lived out in our contemporary relationships. We recruit, and are recruited by, our partners in enacting a mutual pattern in which our respective projections and configurations of object relating fit together as elements of the inner world of one individual converge with their partner’s. Apprehen-

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sion of this “unconscious fit” is part of the initial unconscious attraction of one for the other—the feeling, for example, of mutual recognition: sometimes expressed as “meeting my soulmate”. This “couple fit” is established and maintained through cycles of projective identification, and under optimal conditions there is some fluidity to this, an ebb and flow to the exchanges of projections. The couples we see in therapy might often be said to be bringing into the therapeutic encounter a “projective fit” that has gone wrong: the projective system between them is no longer fluid, if it ever has been. It is, instead, likely to have become a closed system of repeated cycles of projective identification, often characterized by polarized, fixed perceptions of each partner by the other (what Morgan, 1995, has termed a “projective gridlock”) and projections that are “refused entry” from one to the other. There can be a maddening “life-or-death” quality of not getting through to the other, often a sense that each individual’s way of seeing things, or sense of meaning, their “psychic survival”, is at stake. Such a situation, even if experienced in less extreme form, produces a stuck enactment between the partners, a repeated cycle of frustration, misunderstanding, or, worse, an enactment within which they are trapped, outside as well as inside the sessions. And it is generally the conscious perception of being stuck in familiar, repeated cycles of interaction that brings the couple to seek help. In considering the place of the transference in couple psychotherapy, we need to recognize the central place of enactment. This has been recognized as an important element from the earliest days of psychoanalysis. Freud wrote: the patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed but acts it out . . . he repeats it, without of course knowing that he repeats it . . . We must be prepared to find, therefore, that the patient yields to the compulsion to repeat, not only in his personal attitude to his doctor, but also in every other activity and relationship which may occupy his life at the time. . . . [Freud, 1914g, pp. 150–151]

Fisher (1993) points out that, while many believe that fine-grained analytic work on deeply unconscious configurations cannot take place in couple therapy—dreams, for example, rarely feature in the material—analysts such as Meltzer (1967) and others after

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him have drawn attention to the presence of the unconscious in the session with the notion of “acting in” (“acting out”, within the ­transference, in the therapeutic session, i.e. enactment). As Fisher puts it: I would suggest that the regressive pull of the couple relationship frequently produces sessions that resemble nothing so much as enacted dreams. [Fisher, 1993, pp. 166]

Such enactment is often in the service of seeking to preserve the couple’s defensive equilibrium. This can also be an important mode of communication of unconscious meaning in the session. Hobson (1985/2008, 2011, 2015) describes material that is presented in the session and is enacted as part of the telling as “selfrepresenting”. According to Hobson, a “self-representing event” may be a story recounted of a recent episode or a picture or memory from a dream, which depicts and shapes the pattern of relatedness occurring at the point that it is communicated. His suggestion is that a therapist who is sensitive to this phenomenon may be in a better position to grasp what is happening within the transference at such moments. A simple example of this might be a couple who begin a session by describing their son as being totally “plugged in” to his electronic devices—earphones for music, eyes on a screen—and totally walled off from them: every channel of perception shut down. As the material of the session unfolds, with the couple apparently deaf to any of the therapists’ attempts to reach them, the image of the son starts to feel like a representation of how the couple actively shut themselves off within the session, maintaining an equilibrium that requires the wiping out of any potential emotional contact in the room, every channel for reception being blockaded. One might say that the picture the couple present is played out in the transference, representing how the couple defensively maintain their psychic equilibrium within the session. The therapist’s task is to be aware of being recruited or under pressure to conform to particular patterns of relationship, how the couple shape the transactions in the room in ways that avoid a contact with difficult or disturbing anxieties, relationships, or states of mind in order to preserve an emotional equilibrium. The therapist’s focus is the transference—and the countertransference—in order to

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understand in the therapeutic work how these patterns of relating within the self, between the partners, and with the therapist are established and maintained. Each of the clinical examples in this chapter is, in fact, an amalgam of work with different couples that, I hope, gives a picture of what I am describing while remaining true to the underlying psychic experience of the couples involved.

Clinical example:  maintaining the defensive equilibrium A couple agreed that they don’t make any attempt to have “moments” together, where they might discuss things in an intimate way: it is all about domestic plans with the children, even if they do talk. They both seemed clear that this was mostly his problem. She then said with feeling that she did not know whether really he had any desire to spend any time with her. She looked at him, and for a moment there was a pause where the atmosphere seemed tense and alive. But almost immediately she had moved on to describe a philosophical approach to “being in the moment”. And had I seen the film Brief ­Encounter—and more on the details of this. He then took up the theme and went on to tell me of all the obstacles they tended to put in the way of having any time together, where they might talk . . . and as he spoke, I had the sense of the atmosphere feeling more like a comfortable armchair debate. He concluded—yes, they definitely had a problem with intimacy . . . that was why they were here. The atmosphere had shifted—comfortable, now, certainly, and also empty—a feeling in the room that there was really nothing more that could be said. I thought that they were showing me something that happened very quickly, where I was invited to join them in scratching my head and agreeing in an abstract sort of way that what was missing was intimacy—and to treat them as a couple who were telling me about a problem that they wanted my help with. As well as doing that, I think they were also showing me how they defended themselves from the potential moment of exposure or intimacy in the room—where she had briefly touched on a painful nerve in her question to him—but how quickly they both glanced off, from a “Brief Encounter”

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perhaps, into a familiar choreography—where the quality of the interaction and the atmosphere conveyed the enactment of the retreat, while apparently telling me of the problem. And which involved them both. Within the session, I found myself tuning out, feeling sleepy. In due course, when I “came to”, I realized that now I was feeling anxious, while in front of me, the couple behaved as though they had no memory or awareness of the area of anxiety and uncertainty that they had just before touched upon. I tried to put words to my observation. My first attempts to speak to them about this seemed not to be noticed: the couple continued in the same vein. When I made a further attempt, the atmosphere changed dramatically. He rounded on me, and she joined in. What was I suggesting? How could I be so insensitive? This picture of me became worked up in the room, as if from nowhere. They felt at that moment to have “ganged up”, and I was given the experience of being on the outside, feeling unsure and unable to think. The uncertain ground the couple had briefly occupied had now been retreated from, into the “certainty” of their united position against me. Being in the room with a couple where such powerful dynamics are provoked, with the therapist in the firing line, can be extremely difficult, bringing to mind Fisher’s comment that in such a situation a couple psychotherapist may feel as if inhabiting not simply the couple’s “dream”, but the couple’s “enacted nightmare” (Fisher, 1999a, p. 147). How one helps the couple to move from action and enactment to thought and feeling, where they are less in the grip of unconscious beliefs and phantasies, less driven to enact them with their partners in mutual cycles of rigid projective identification, is a fundamental challenge for the couple therapist. The extent to which enactment dominates in the clinical session, or whether there is a place for thinking, depends upon the developmental position of the couple, on their establishing what Britton (1989) has termed a “third position”—the development of a capacity for a linked separateness in relation to the object—and this links to the couple’s relationship to the Oedipus situation, as I now discuss.

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Oedipus and the triangular setting of couple psychotherapy Enactment within couple psychotherapy takes place within the situation of couple plus therapist, which is the elemental feature of the setting that, at a psychic level, represents the oedipal configuration. “Bion made the succinct remark that when two people get together they make a relationship whether they like it or not; this applies to all encounters including psychoanalysis” (Brenman Pick, 1985, p. 157). Like it or not, in the situation of couple psychotherapy three people are getting together—and there is an oedipal situation in front of you. My question is whether, in addition to the problematic aspects of this, which are often highlighted, there may be helpful ones too, allowing oedipal difficulties to be thrown into sharp focus. Of course, I am by no means saying that one needs three people to be in the room—clearly the Oedipus complex is central to individual psychotherapy and analysis. Working in the “triangular” setting of couple psychotherapy may, however, offer a helpful context for working with couples whose difficulties in sharing “psychic space” are underpinned by oedipal issues, as I shall discuss. However, even if we consider the setting to give fertile ground for such work, the situation brings increased pressures to enact familiar oedipal configurations, and the therapist needs to attend carefully to the multiple transferences in the room and their own countertransference. The therapist’s struggle to be both involved with the individuals and the couple and to be sufficiently separate so as to comment on this transferential involvement enacts the very struggle at the heart of the Oedipal situation. [Ruszczynski, 1998, p. 46]

With the couple in the consulting-room, the classic analytic position of the therapist as the primary object of the transference is changed: now there is the extra dimension of the couple relationship and the transference between the partners that is the central focus of the work. The challenge for therapists becomes how to move in their understanding and focus between these dimensions of transference, from the couple to one another and to the therapist. Britton (1989) describes how a relatively successful ­negotiation of

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the Oedipus complex enables the development of what he terms a “third position” in relation to the object, which allows the possibility of movement in mental space—from the position of empathic engagement with the subjectivity of the other, on the one hand, to being able to move to a vantage point from which to view this relating, to think about it, on the other. Developmentally, this represents a move from a “linear” relationship to the primary object where self and other are exclusively bound to a position of being able to bear to apprehend the independent link of the parental couple. Toleration of this gives a new psychic perception: the experience of a relationship outside the self, which one is linked to but separate from. Developmental difficulties in achieving this are linked to problems in sharing “psychic space”. Couples with problems in this area inhabit a terrain that is binary rather than triadic, and this often presents as an unstable oscillation between a claustrophobic sense of being “too close” or engulfed and a feeling of being “too far apart” or abandoned (Rey, 1994). Such couples will find the therapist’s attempts to move in their thinking, in the potential triadic space of the session, to take up different positions in relation to the transference relationships in the room, very difficult to tolerate. Therapists are likely to find their own thinking compromised: their freedom to think—or “couple with” their own internal analytic objects—may be under attack, and this can amount to a collapse of the “triadic space” in the session, a situation where it becomes very difficult for the therapist to establish a position of being able to think about, as opposed to joining in, the couple’s enactment. As therapists, we need to try to hold our analytic position, but, particularly with couples whose problematic relationship to the oedipal situation leaves them with difficulties in sharing psychic space, there will be a powerful pressure to enact this within the session. However, although it offers challenges, the triangular situation of couple and therapist may also allow the possibility for observation of the enactment between the partners at times when the therapist is not, at that moment, on the receiving end of powerful projective identification, as the main object of the transference enactment. The couple therapist is not outside the “total situation” of the transference (Joseph, 1985) and still draws upon counter-

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transference to understand what is unfolding in the room, but perhaps, when less the immediate target of the projective focus, is more able to “think their observations”.

Clinical example:  psychic space and the couple He told me that they had had an argument. They worried about whether their young son was alienating himself from his peer group. He had tried to persuade their son not to wear what he saw as a “feminine” outfit to a birthday party. It got boxed in-between them, and he had insisted more and more firmly that their son mustn’t wear the clothes. Their son had had a tantrum. At that point, she came in—she understood, she said, his anxieties, of course she did. But couldn’t he see that he was taking up a rigid position with their son, which wasn’t going to help. I felt some agreement with her position as she was talking. She conveyed a picture of how rigid her husband had become—couldn’t he see, you couldn’t force the boy to change by imposing anything: changing his apparel would cloak, but not alter the underlying problem. I hesitated. All of us in the room knew that her husband had had considerable anxieties about this. His mother had, metaphorically speaking, “dressed him” as a girl, treating him, he felt, like a longed-for daughter throughout his childhood, frowning on any more “boyish” activities he had wanted to undertake, disallowing these and controlling him. Yet I felt constrained from opening up this link: it felt that then I would be conveying that it was “his” problem, that he would feel that all the difficulty was being located in him. She continued in her “helpful” vein—but the quality, which had at first felt as conveying an understanding of his anxieties, now seemed less shared. She couldn’t believe that he couldn’t see what he was doing: her own parents had tried to impose things on her, had at one point tried to control everything—her clothes, her friends—all to fit with their religious faith, and it was completely counterproductive: she had refused to take on the faith at all.

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As she went on, her position, as she expressed it, became more absolute—his position was completely mistaken, rigid: how could he not see it as she did, seemed to be the underlying message. Indeed, the implication was that he had to see it as she did. I became aware that where at first my sympathy had been with her, now, under the guise of arguing for the liberal position with their son, her position had become a rigid one. It was she who was seeking to impose her way of seeing the problem on him, so that he should be clothed in the same views as she, with no room for the nuances in his position: his anxieties about the difficulties he saw unfolding for their son when the boys at school might reject him for being different from them. He, in turn, insisted on “standing his ground”. The situation developed into one in which there was no fluidity, no give and take, no room for knowing about their differences on the one hand, or any shared parental anxiety on the other. Instead, there was a sense that for each of them there was a desperate need to get something through to their partner, which the other would not take in—and at the same time, needing to protect themselves from having the other’s point of view pushed into them. Here, it seemed that the need for protection of the self from intrusive projective identification or from an impenetrable other was played out between them in the session. I felt at this point in the session that the couple were enacting an object relationship where there was room for only one mind in an intimate relationship. Not only were they showing me their struggle with sharing psychic space, as, defensively, they turned the situation into a fight in order to escape the risks of greater openness and intimacy, but they also managed to give me a taste of this experience. For my part, it felt very difficult to find any place to stand from which to talk to them, one that would not put me between the couple, lined up with one or the other partner, felt to be taking sides and wiping out the other partner. Initially this was what happened when I put my observations into words. Hostile responses were evoked, as I was felt either to be pushing them to submit to my way of seeing things, or failing to take in

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their experience. Putting into words what one of them felt was at the cost of negating the other. Now there was an enactment in the room involving three rather than two—the couple and myself as therapist. I tried to find a space where I could step back and think with them about what was happening. Eventually, finding a position where I could speak to them about how they were reacting to me seemed to give them some room to think about this. From this perspective, they began to be able to see that it was no longer just the two of them enacting the dynamic in a linear way, but a three-way affair, where within the “triangular configuration” in the room, each had witnessed the other playing out an aspect of this object relationship with me. For each partner, witnessing the same thing that they were familiar with in their battles with each other now happening with me was important—perhaps for a moment giving a perspective on something that normally they were just “in” together. My attempts not to push back but to consider their complaints without either disagreeing or agreeing with them seemed to afford the experience of some containment in the heat of the session. It became possible to talk to them about their feeling that they had no common ground, whereas, in fact, they did have shared anxieties—about being able to get through to the other one, or having things pushed into them—and how, then, it was very difficult to find any shared ground between them: their mutual concerns about their son, for example. They became interested in my observations, linking the dynamic enacted between them with an interpretation of their phantasy of the danger of “psychic takeover” in their relationships, and how they shared aspects of this experience in their respective childhoods. It seemed that looking at the total transference situation in the room opened up a space in which the couple could begin to think about themselves, allowing, at least temporarily, a way out of the enactment that had such a grip on them. Of course, the experience of the work was that this could be fleeting, and there was a movement back and forth between such moments when there was some room to think and others when the situation was more “linear”, where there was a lack of “triadic space”. At these times, I would be under pressure and boxed in, feeling that any intervention I made was simply within and

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r­epeating an enactment, with no vantage point for thinking possible and that my capacity to think, or to find a position where I could make observations about what was happening in a way that would be helpful to the couple, was very limited. The developmental position the couple is in at any point will determine the extent to which there is an experience of triadic space, or how much this potential psychic space collapses into a linear one—where movement in mental space between different vantage points is restricted, and the couple’s capacity to make use of the therapist’s thinking is similarly curtailed.

Developmental positions of the couple As I have discussed, the therapist can be pulled into one or other pole of what we might call the “transference triangle” of couple psychotherapy—which encompasses the dimensions of the transference between the partners as well as their individual and joint transferences to the therapist—and the corresponding countertransference. Within this, the therapist may be the object of transference of one or another partner, or of the couple. I think that whether this is experienced in a more linear mode, where the therapist may be felt to be simply acting upon them in ways that confirm their projections, or in a way where it possible to maintain triadic space and thinking may depend upon the developmental position that the couple are functioning in at that time. Where the situation is a more concrete one and there is less psychic separateness possible between the partners or with the therapist, then—as Britton (1989) has described in the context of individual work—the therapist’s thinking/interpretation is more likely to be experienced as an intolerable coupling in the therapist’s mind, the couple will respond with hostility and projection, and a more persecuted state is likely to hold sway. How one responds therapeutically to couples functioning at this level raises particular challenges. Here I am suggesting that considering the developmental position of the couple may be useful in navigating these technical

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challenges. There are a number of factors that the therapist might bear in mind: 1. How far are they functioning as a couple in predominantly paranoid-schizoid or depressive position states of mind? 2. What are the qualities of the oedipal couple that they have in their minds and that may be enacted in the room between the couple and with the therapist? 3. In the atmosphere of the session, how much “psychic space” is there for thinking about, as opposed to enacting, the difficulties of the couple? 4. What is the nature of the projective identification? Here one might consider the degree of intrusiveness and violence of this, on the one hand, and the capacity of each partner to contain this, to be a “receptor” for the other partner, on the other. As Sodré (2004) puts it: how much are they “[able to] introject and partially identify with what has been introjected without losing the boundaries of the self”? As I have said, part of the difficulty of working with couples is what they bring into the sessions, in the form of lived-out experiences, enactments, where more malignant and rigid cycles of projective identification grip them. The couple may inhabit the material they bring to the session, their stories and battles, in the most concrete way. A central question for clinical practice is: what is the developmental position of the couple in the session, and what is their position in relation to the material that they bring? What the couple bring to the session may appear to the therapist to be very rich in meaning but may be experienced by the couple simply as “fact”, not as food for thought. For any couple there may, of course, be shifts, moment to moment and session to session, in the extent to which they move between states of mind where there is space for thinking and reflection and being gripped by enactment. This is essentially about the dimensions of the psychic space available in the room at any point: how much space is there for thought, or reflection? How much pressure for action? It is important for the therapist to monitor this, as it has crucial implications for understanding how the couple are functioning and for considering how to intervene with them.

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Clinical example I feel with this couple that, at times at least, I can formulate to myself what is going on in the room, but how to help them to think about it is another matter. Each partner seems to want to be understood—for their thoughts to be taken in—but neither can really take back in any understanding. The encounter with the other partner’s mind is felt to negate their own, and a repeated battle over whose mind will dominate is being acted out in the room. Rarely is there any space in the room to think with them, and this claustrophobic collision of two minds is a fight for psychic survival that occasionally breaks down into violence. On one occasion, she began with a monologue—an account of how she had felt unable to speak to a couple with whom they had spent the weekend about the way their son was treating her son: she couldn’t speak to them directly about it and felt it was a brick wall with her husband. He doesn’t listen to her, he’s shut off, he’s not interested. She looked directly at me, leaned forward in her chair, turned away from him. She went on at some considerable length. He shifted around uneasily, put his head in his hands and then pulled out his telephone and began looking at it intently, pressing buttons on the keypad and mumbling, “This is hardly interactive, is it?” Although her complaint was that he shut himself off from her throughout their marriage and that she longed for him to be in there “with both feet”, her pressure of speech, her monologue shut him out. What was represented in the room was a situation where one object was shut out by another. What was complained about in her account was her experience of being shut out by him and of not being able to speak directly, to get through to, the couple at the weekend. The situation in the room showed the scenario. The protagonists were different—he, this time, given projectively by her the experience of the thing that she was apparently trying to tell him about. One way of seeing this episode is that she had excluded him while I was the focus of her attention. She talked to me, leaning forward, turned away from him, while he fiddled with his phone.

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In a sense, then, she and I became the couple in the room, and he had the experience of being positioned on the outside of this coupling. His rueful comment that this was not “interactive” may be taken as an expression of his feeling “outside” her engagement with me. However, at the time this did not feel as though it was the full picture. In fact, in my countertransference I realized that I was quite unaware of having registered any feeling of his being excluded. In trying to understand this, I became increasingly aware that she was not, in fact, interacting with me, and that I, too, even in the intensity of her talking to me, felt “on the outside”, subject to witnessing a stream of words and feelings directed at me but not engaging me. In this sense, perhaps his comment “it’s hardly interactive” had another meaning: capturing the quality of the coupling that did take place, where the picture that emerged was of a kind of masturbatory activity—she with her words, he with his phone. My feeling was that there was no intercourse allowed in the room at all. And this did fit the picture the couple often brought, of a “pseudo-mature” couple, seemingly engaged, but not really interacting at any depth—feeling that they were “going through the motions” and at times feeling very alone. As it emerged, it began to be possible to think about this with them as a “couple retreat” from powerful anxieties of engulfment, should any intercourse take place. The fear of engulfment seemed at times to be manifest in the violent rows that could also erupt between them; however, in reality, these again seemed to have the quality of each standing their ground—his reality versus her reality—and never the twain to meet. In both scenarios—the rows on one hand and the parallel “masturbatory” activity on the other— there seemed to be a position of “no intercourse”, a safeguarding of the self. Given this situation, it was very difficult for the couple to get to a “third position”, an ability to think about their relating. I found that, even when I was not felt to be “invading” them with my interpretations, these would tend to fall flat—agreed with by the couple, but not taken in. Rather, they seemed to glance off them; many sessions had a quality of “going through the motions”. Like the couple that she had not been able to get through to at the weekend, so I could not get through to them. As the therapist, my “third position” involved trying to find a way of talking to them about their

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underlying anxiety, their shared terror of psychic takeover, their difficulty in allowing any taking-in or any intercourse in the room with me. At this point in the work, my interpretations tended to focus upon this area: their shared anxieties in relation to the work and their transference to the therapy and to the therapist. When we discussed this in the session, for example, she eventually spoke about how she had felt at the time of the episode at the weekend; at one point she turned to him very directly and addressed him for the first time: “I felt humiliated”, she began, going on to tell him in detail about her feelings. This, he said, felt totally different. He could now understand what she was saying. The shift felt important: what had at first been put into words was the enactment in the room of an experience that was being passed between them in projective identification, where, although words were being used apparently to tell the other partner about an experience, the countervailing communication was the playing out of that very experience—which produced a frustrated retreat from her partner—confirming for her the experience of his withdrawal. What I have described is an example of using the triangular configuration of couple therapy to understand how the couple enact their difficulties within it, experiencing within the transference the “psychic retreat” by the couple into a narcissistic world, where neither partner needs to feel excluded, because no intercourse is allowed. The oedipal configuration in the room was helpful, in so far as it provided a setting in which the enactment between the partners, involving the therapist as the third, could be experienced directly. As such, I was both witness to, and a participant in, a situation where the couple “coupled-up”, so to speak, in order to avoid “coupling”—engaging in a “pseudo-coupling” to avoid the dangers of intimacy. Thinking about the countertransference experience within this three-way setting enabled me to understand the nature of the coupling between the partners. However, when thinking about how to take up the meaning of what is enacted in the room, the therapist can often face a difficult situation: while wanting to offer an understanding of the enactment, which would enable the couple to begin to see something meaningful, their expe-

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rience may be that what is happening just “is” and can’t be thought about: to think would imply taking some other perspective on the experience, rather than simply being in it. And the very repetition or “stuckness” of the enactment may reflect the developmental position within which the couple is functioning. This is important in terms of the question of how the therapist responds and what use can be made of an understanding of the meaning of what is being observed in the room. Frosch (2012, p. 59) comments that enactment is “the event where unformulated experience is perched ready for translation . . . into a language having symbolic meaning . . . analysing enactment provides for movement from concreteness to symbolization.” While this may be true, there can be a danger, with couples who are functioning at a level where there is a lack of triadic space and consequent difficulty with symbolic thinking, of talking to them as though they are functioning much better than they really are. For many couples presenting in our consulting-rooms, the partners are not functioning in a developmental position that would enable them to take in interpretations about what each is bringing to the creation and maintenance of the troubled dynamic between them. In such situations one has the more difficult therapeutic challenge of how to work with them so that they feel “taken in” and understood. I think in such situations it is useful, technically, to consider interpretations of the kind termed “analyst-centred” in individual work (Steiner, 1993). Here, the analyst attempts, from within the transference, to put into words patients’ projection into the therapist, which perforce is the experience that they have of the therapist, so that they feel understood—rather than being given interpretations that require them to take back in an “understanding” of themselves, which they are not yet psychically equipped to do. In couple work such an approach might be formulated as being about “couple-centred” interpretations, mapping out what seems to be happening, putting into words their experience—of each other, and of the therapist and the therapy, holding what Morgan (2001) has termed a “couple state of mind”. If the therapist can offer the experience to the couple that there can be an accommodation for their disturbing feelings, a place for them in the therapy, it may offer containment (Bion, 1962b) at this stage in the work. Ferro (1999) puts it like this:

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. . . [interpretations] are like cargo which has to be found a place on board a ship, but instead of a ship, there’s a boat. We must first expand the boat (develop the patient’s alpha function of the apparatus for thinking thoughts) before the weighty contents can be taken or board. [Ferro, 1999, p. xvi]

Perhaps then, over time, as each partner in the couple is more contained, they will be able to take in interpretations from the therapist aimed to give an understanding of their own unconscious processes, which create the dynamic between them. Of course the position the therapist takes up in relation to the material depends upon the developmental position of the couple at any one time— and this may shift from moment to moment, or session to session. Therapists might ask themselves, what is the position of the couple in relation to the material that I am hearing about? Are they in it or are they able to think about it (I am putting it rather starkly, of course, it may be a fluctuating thing)? To what extent is what I am being offered now a re-enactment in the room of what I am being told? Importantly, not everything is an enactment of what one is being told—the couple who are functioning in a more “depressive position” state are likely to be able to tell you about something they do, without enacting it in the moment of the telling—they are speaking to you about it, and thinking with you about it from a different vantage point. I am now going to give a brief example of another couple where there was evidence of something of a shift—from repeated enactment of an experience to a state of mind in which it was more possible for the couple to think about their mental states. The movements I observed with this couple were between repeated enactment, where there was “representation in action”, so to speak, and moments with them where there was the potential for symbolization, for thinking about, and therefore working through, an experience.

Clinical example:  enactment and thinking For this couple, psychic space was crucial. At one point in a session it seemed that a familiar pattern was being repeated. The female partner in the couple reported recruiting a flatmate to

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fill a familiar function that we knew well—a role that their now grown-up son had had before. As she had done in the past with her son, now she was forming something of an exclusive couple with the young female lodger, and, as usual, her husband was left on the outside. She felt she could see what was going on. I had felt wary, in the past, as her telling me the same story of her insight into what was going on at home could have had the quality of her joining up with me as the therapist couple. In fact, as we explored this in the session, she had the phantasy, for a moment, that he and I were now joined in looking at her as the problem. So there was the beginning of a familiar enactment: a story about couplings and exclusions that then came to be played out in the room. The enactment of the story was the convergence that I was used to seeing. But this time, it felt to me that she wasn’t in it so much anymore—when she spoke of how excluded she felt, it lacked real conviction, and her state of mind seemed to be more one of curiosity in relation to the pattern—and his complaints about her lacked the absoluteness of previous times. At one point, he reacted to her tears about their loss of contact in the relationship over years. He spoke up: he said that it felt in one way, that her distress was a confirmation of his fears—that if they got into anything difficult, it was a disaster. But he conveyed this as something he could observe in himself. In fact, he went on, normally he didn’t think he was aware of even having these thoughts. I felt that something different was happening in terms of his position in relation to his feelings: he was less gripped by them, more able to observe them, and to think about them. But at first she had heard this as confirming her beliefs about him, and between them they started to re-enact the familiar scenario: the “lockdown”, as they called it. However, in the session, I felt that what was important was in observing the area of shift—what wasn’t, in fact, simply being repeated. The area of significance, then, felt to be noticing the small and fledgling glimpses of the “not enacted”—to catch hold of them in the face of the powerful pressure towards recreating the familiar. When I took this up, he reported a dream he had had: they were in the tiny claustrophobic flat that they shared, and

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he pulled back a curtain to find an extra room, a large space, that had always been there but had never been seen before. The symbolic representation in the dream of the increased mental space in the room conveyed the internal shift that went with this capacity to begin to have a new vantage point from which to think about the familiar repetition of their shared phantasies and anxieties. In this sense, the dream perhaps offered an interpretation of the internal situation of the couple, a situation where, unusually, the theme described in the couple story was not also the only story of the transactions in the session. The technical implication of this is that picking up and highlighting what feels different, even small or fledgling glimpses of thought where usually there is enactment, can be very important. At least initially, I had felt the couple were using the session to enact their usual pattern of couplings and exclusions, but thinking in the countertransference about the couple’s position in relation to the material gave me a picture of greater psychic space, of the couple being in a different position from their usual one in relation to their difficulties. This example shows perhaps how the expression of the couple’s emotional experience can be on a continuum, from a position where it can be thought about as having a symbolic meaning at one end, to a-symbolic re-presentation in action, at another. One of the technical implications, as I have said, is that the therapist might listen for how far the transactions with and between the couple map onto—or not—the content of the material being described, how much there is psychic space for curiosity and thinking, and to what extent the couple is in a linear world of certainty, conviction, and enactment.

Conclusion With the pressure towards enactment in couple therapy, getting hold of the meaning of the “acting in” between the partners and in relation to the therapist is at the heart of the work. This presents technical challenges for the couple psychotherapist. Here it is important to consider that what is meant by “enactment” in the

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general analytic literature, derived as it is from individual psychoanalysis, is perhaps somewhat different from the enactment that we see played out between the partners of a couple in psychotherapy. In the individual setting there is recognition that enactment may be ubiquitous (Steiner, 2006) and that the person of the analyst may have an influence upon how this unfolds—the patient’s projective identifications fitting with aspects of the analyst’s own internal object world to produce an enactment that, to some degree at least, involves them both. However, the hope would be that the analyst will have the capacity to notice such things and to work to render them in the domain of thought and in the service of therapeutic understanding. So, in the individual analytic setting, at least one person in the therapeutic couple is likely to be trying to reflect upon the meaning of such enactments. By contrast, the couple enacting their projective system in therapy are often not seeking to contain but, rather, to defensively reproduce the enactment—in the service of splitting off and denying repudiated aspects of the self, maintaining their psychic equilibrium, and avoiding pain. Any change in this equilibrium may be very threatening to the couple, and so there will be strong pressure to keep it in place. In individual therapy, enactment may be seen as an inevitable component, and nowadays, rather than being viewed as a sign of therapeutic failure, be thought of as a potentially productive phenomenon. But it is nevertheless conceived as one that the analyst falls into with a patient over time, and then “recovers from” using the experience to gain conviction of understanding the transference. In couple therapy, enactment is not an occasional phenomenon, it is centre stage; often it is simply how the couple functions with each other. The position of the couple therapist in the face of this can be a difficult one—witnessing the couple’s enactment, and then trying to find a way of intervening in it, while under pressure to become part of it. None of us “resolves” the Oedipus situation, and the therapist may be faced with particular countertransference challenges: of being within and outside sometimes very primitive versions of the oedipal couple. The therapist may be “ganged up on” at times, and the couple of the paranoid-schizoid oedipal situation may behave with disregard, contempt, and exclusion of the “third”. The therapist may feel anxious about getting between the partners or,

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conversely, being on the outside of the couple—or may, at times, fear triumphing over them. One of the pioneers of couple therapy, Henry Dicks commented almost 50 years ago that the dread of treating couples together is prominent. Perhaps this “dread” links to the oedipal anxieties that confront all who enter into the setting of couple psychotherapy. The early approaches in the field, as developed at the Family Discussion Bureau, founded after the war and the predecessor of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, did not involve working with both partners in a couple together in the room. The practice was to see each individual separately: each partner with their own therapist. The idea was that the transference of each individual partner to the therapist could be understood through individual sessions with them, and then used to guide an understanding of the transference between the partners. It is striking that these early pioneers kept the therapy with the couple confined to the dyadic situation. The reasons for this may have been, at one level, technical ones but perhaps, at another, reflective of the difficulties of the oedipal anxieties of the situation. Fisher (1999a) links Dicks’ comment to the fear that whatever is said in couple therapy also becomes a form of action: one partner doing something to the other partner, not merely communicating about something. This is a problem, certainly, but, as I have tried to show, it can also be an opportunity. As Tuckett explains it: Enactment makes it possible to know in representable and communicable ways about deep unconscious identifications and primitive levels of functioning which could otherwise only be guessed at or discussed at the intellectual level. [Tuckett, 1997, p. 214]

As I have discussed, enactment can help the therapist to know about this through witnessing and experiencing it, though then one has the difficulty of moving from enactment to thinking. The therapeutic task might be said to be to find a way, in the heat of the session, to put together observations of what is happening in the transference between the partners, and with the therapist, to help the couple move from enactment of their problems to being able to think about them. The aim is to help couples to become observers of themselves, enhancing the possibility of communication between them.

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Perhaps, particularly for couples who experience difficulty in sharing psychic space, whose everyday experience of their relationship can be an oppositional and lonely one of entrenched differences, it can be very powerful to begin to see that this is, in fact, a conscious manifestation of underlying common or shared unconscious anxieties, that they have been drawn together for powerful, thinkable, shared unconscious reasons. If this position can be found, then they can begin to recognize that the hitherto concretely experienced enactments have a meaning that reflects overlapping aspects of each individual’s inner worlds. As I have discussed, the “triangular configuration” of the setting of couple therapy is important here: where the couple can witness their relationship difficulties being enacted not only between the two of them but enacted with, and hopefully contained by, the therapist. This can enable the couple to get some perspective on their dynamic: something that is difficult perhaps for any of us in our intimate relationships, but for couples with such difficulties is particularly hard to find. The “triangular” setting of the therapy also allows them to experience different permutations of coupling—with combinations of who is “in” the couple and who is “outside” it, shifting over time. Being able to tolerate such a position of being linked to, but outside, the couple is also particularly difficult for couples with problems in sharing psychic space, as Britton (1989) has described. We can see, therefore, that there are a number of aspects of the “oedipal configuration” of the couple therapy setting that may be helpful, particularly for these couples: » recognition of the shared nature of their underlying anxieties; » the experience of seeing their dynamic enacted with, but ultimately contained by, the therapist; » the experience of the different permutations of coupling in the room—including with the therapist, who will often be “outside” the couple—and witnessing this position being tolerated by the therapist; » the therapist’s capacity to take in and not “refuse entry” to their projections, and being able, therefore, to contain feelings that the partners have not been able to be receptive to for each other or to bear in themselves.

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Of course, it goes without saying that much of the above would be important in any therapy, but it may be particularly significant for such couples, who have difficulties in sharing psychic space and whose problems lie in precisely these areas, as I have discussed. What may look like small gains may have significant longer-term effects, if such couples can begin to get a perspective and be helped to give up the positions of absolute certainty that can pervade their relationship and the sessions with them. As Sodré (1994), writing on obsessional certainty, notes, such “certainty” reflects a rigid adherence to sameness and the preservation of a two-person relationship to the object, which is part of an attempt to obviate the threat of “triangularity” in relationships. The very “triangularity” of the setting of couple therapy presents such couples with the matrix of their area of psychic difficulty, which also perhaps offers, then, a very relevant context for working with them. If such shifts of perspective can be achieved, then each partner might begin to extend a curiosity and openness to thinking about the experience of the other—to move towards thinking about the meaning of their relationship dynamics and how each contributes to them. Such a state of mind allows the emergence of their relationship as a “third entity” (Ruszczynski, 2005) to which both partners relate, which may become a creative resource (Morgan, 2005) and fulfil a containing function for them. Whether we can see “the other” and know about their unique centre of gravity, their different perceptions, or, instead, re-create in our minds a version of them and their inner world that is in our own image, shaped by our own pre-conceptions and certainties, is a fundamental question in terms of how much room there is for growth and development in our relationships. Returning to Freud’s warning to the therapist contemplating working with the couple not to “combine the resistance” of two partners by seeing the couple together, it is important to point out that couple psychotherapy is not about offering two individual therapies in parallel. Instead, the focus is at the level of the couple relationship. In focusing upon couples with particular difficulties in sharing psychic space, I have explored how the setting of couple psychotherapy (the “oedipal configuration in the room”) can be used in helpful ways to observe how such problems may operate

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within the relationship. Drawing upon concepts such as “enactment”, the “developmental position of the couple”, and “psychic space”, I have discussed how they offer clinical signposts that might guide us in our efforts to help such couples, who are stuck in entrenched and destructive dynamics, to establish less restricted and repetitive patterns of relating.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Deborah Farrell, my wife, for her thoughts on and discussion of this chapter.

CHAPTER FIVE

The quarrelling couple: the couple’s unconscious relations and enactments Aleksandra Novakovic

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n this chapter I discuss the couple’s unconscious relations and how these are enacted in the couple’s recurrent arguments. Repetitive quarrelling is a defensive way of relating, and, although the couple is engaged in a verbal interchange, the language is used as a form of action, to act out and evacuate disturbing experiences. In arguments of this kind, partners do not want to know about their own or their partner’s emotional experience, nor about the nature of the relationship between them. The particular issue of contention in this type of quarrelling can be seen as the “manifest” content of the quarrel, and the purpose of the argument is to manage the “latent”, unconscious contents of their minds. Arguments can be enraging, shaming, persecuting, disheartening, aggressive, hurtful; they can provoke excitement, relief, triumph, despair about something that is felt to have been destroyed. In the process of arguing, both partners project intolerable aspects of themselves into each other. What is disturbing in a couple relationship and hence what needs to be projected can vary between different couples and between the individual partners in their relationship, but the nature of a disturbing experience can also change from one moment to the next in any couple.

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In the first section of the chapter, “The Quarrelling Couple”, I present clinical material from couple therapy, focusing on their quarrels and on the interaction that preceded or followed these quarrels, also characteristic of their daily engagement with each other. In the second section, “Unconscious Relations and Enactments”, I look at the process of projective identification, the couple’s unconscious relations and enactments, and the purpose or function of their arguments. I would like to add here that although the focus of this chapter is on couple relations in the individuals and on the individuals in a couple relationship, inevitably there was also a continuous dynamic interaction on the level of the group, since in their external and internal reality the couple engaged with various others, and, likewise in the context of couple therapy they engaged with me.

The quarrelling couple The partners, whom I will call Marta and Peter, were in their early forties; they had been together for seven years and had no children; he was in full-time work, and she held small part-time jobs, mainly on a voluntary basis. They had met while working in a shop in their home country, and problems surfaced early in the relationship. They argued about different things, and they argued very frequently. Marta was often subdued, speaking in a low voice and in a girlish manner. Sometimes she giggled, at other times she cried silently. She was slower in expressing herself but could be quite persistent in repeating some issues. Peter was quick to feel agitated and angry, even outraged. He had a flair for making comical statements and was more animated and talkative. Both were quite childlike in their manner. Marta’s psychiatrist had referred them for couple therapy to a specialized service in another borough, and although she had been stable for a number of years, he was concerned that if the relationship broke up, Marta might have a psychotic breakdown. She was upset because Peter dismissed her feelings and complained that he did not consider her views. Similarly, Peter thought Marta did not listen to him, and he accused her of a lack of respect.

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Marta described her mother as uncaring, very controlling, and harsh, and her father as a weak man wrapped up in his own world, distant, and also uncaring in his own way. She had her first psychotic breakdown in her early twenties, and a few years later she had a second hospital admission. Since then, she had been stable on anti-psychotic medication. Peter’s father had separated from his mother before his birth, and he had never met his father. His mother seemed to suffer from depression. Although he had no information about his father, he was convinced that he must have come from the “scum” of society, since he had abandoned his child. He thought he had always felt unprotected and inferior to other children because he was fatherless. I saw the couple on a weekly basis for three years, the maximum period of therapy offered in this centre. They attended regularly and punctually, and I do not recall that they missed a single session.

Ugly and dirty Plaintively and in great detail, Marta explained how uncaring Peter was. He was very mean, calling her names, swearing, and shouting at her. He did not behave like a husband, and he avoided her. Peter accusingly pointed out that instead of having a wife who awaited him with open arms, as his colleagues have when they come back from work, he has a wife who rejects him. Marta said that was not true: he was not interested in her, and he told her all the time how ugly and dirty she was. The other night, when he came home from work at 4 in the morning, he woke her up to give him something to eat and then told her she was ugly. Peter disparagingly pointed out that her hair was dishevelled. He suddenly put his hands on his cheeks, pushing one cheek up and the other down. The effect was that the two halves of his face were pulled in opposite directions, which was both comical and grotesque. He thought her face was lopsided, and he asked her why she could not go and wash it. Marta thought he was too preoccupied with cleanliness. I said there was something very hurtful about being seen as ugly and dirty and that perhaps both had similar concerns.

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Since there were some simple chores that they could not manage on their own, each felt helpless without the other’s input, and as a result they were crudely dependent on each other. It was therefore inevitable that, at some point, they would feel uncared for and at the mercy of the other. Peter always had to ask or wait for Marta to prepare his food and serve him. According to Marta, he had no idea where the plates were stored. Marta was dependent on Peter to manage various modest tasks in relation to their finances, and she had to be reassured frequently that he was there, to hear his voice, often calling him while he was at work. In this instance, Peter was compelled to make Marta feel dirty and ugly, but they often made each other feel inadequate in some way. They evoked different experiences in each other that corresponded to various splits within them, and they could feel helpless and superior, unwanted and rejecting, guilty and blaming. They could easily identify with different inner figures: the face pulled in different directions was an apt metaphor for this. They struggled with irreconcilable states of mind, as depicted in a clown-like mask that contains different expressions simultaneously, one corner of the mouth turned up as if smiling, ready to laugh, to plead, or to triumph, the other turned down in sorrow, contempt, or defeat.

Garbage Marta complained at length about the remains of some building work in their garden and, with rising annoyance, repeated that he had promised to dispose of this but had done nothing. It was intolerable, and in the end she had had to find somebody to remove the garbage. When the man came, she had no money to pay him, and Peter had been unwilling to give her the money. Peter said that anybody with a normal mind would know that the garbage is cleared up when all the work is finished. Marta, now irritated, said he had not told her that and had left her with this garbage indefinitely. Peter, incensed, said that she never listened to him. He had been going to fix the plumbing, and she stopped him. They had to pay the plumber a lot, and he dragged out the job; they had had a lot of problems with him. I wondered if they had felt uncertain about me, whether I

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would be reliable and whether they could trust me. Peter said that was the problem: Marta did not really trust him, and she never believed he could fix anything. Garbage was an important theme, and they made frequent references to cleanliness and dirt. In this example, Marta found the garbage disturbing, but Peter often spoke about something or someone as “dirty”. They “threw” into each other the intolerable feelings of being like “garbage”: filthy or worthless. Peter’s need to make Marta suffer the “garbage” was his way of dealing with feeling like rubbish, and by not informing her about his plans, he had left her helpless and trapped. In fact, they both felt helpless, each projecting helplessness into the other. The garbage in the garden was a disturbing sight for Marta, since it also resonated with her experience of feeling dirty and dirtied. Marta felt as if Peter were forcing the garbage into her or her into the garbage. Actually, in another session he complained that he found it difficult to tolerate such a dirty flat “while she sits like a queen in a rubbish pile”. Marta, too, was denigrating. Her lack of trust in Peter’s ability to manage some jobs in their home, along with her effort to control him, forced Peter to experience her contempt for his capacities and his own lack of authority.

Don’t you see, I am a mental case Marta accused Peter of incompetence and an inability to complete the building work in their flat, while Peter repeatedly insisted that she was useless and crazy. I interrupted the argument and said that each was touching on a really sore point, Peter insisting that Marta was crazy and Marta that he was incapable. However, he feared that he, too, was crazy and might collapse in some way, and she feared she was utterly incapable. Discussion ensued about Marta’s feelings of loneliness and abandonment, since Peter had long working hours and was often out working. Peter then accused her of making life difficult for him by phoning him at work. I pointed out that he had said (earlier in the therapy) that his father had abandoned him and that he had felt rejected. Peter

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seemed taken aback and looked hurt. After a few moments, he said he did not deny that, but that at least he could joke, like today. He had been driving to the session and, near the entrance to the centre’s car park, a man was crossing the road. He had to brake suddenly, and he had shouted at the man: “Hurry up, hurry up! Don’t you see I am a mental case!” Both laughed heartily at that point. Peter explained that he was only joking and (as the windows of the car were closed) the man had not really heard him. The discussion initially centred on Marta, who, in her effort to manage her own fear of an inability to think clearly and use her mind, was compelled to make Peter feel incapable and stupid. Peter, on the other hand, could not contain his anxiety about “losing it”, and he projected his fear of madness into Marta. Things shifted slightly after I interpreted this, and Marta then spoke about feeling lonely and rejected. This was a shared anxiety, and therefore it was quite distressing for Peter to identify with Marta’s experience of feeling abandoned, or of being made to feel guilty for causing her suffering, or with both, and he immediately attacked her. By pointing out how she called him at work, he showed that it was not he who was abandoned and needy, but the reverse, and, furthermore, that she needed him. He became the rejecting figure, while he projected his experience of his own rejection and neediness into Marta and then attacked in her these disowned parts of himself. It was upsetting for Peter when I pointed out that he, too, felt abandoned. Resorting to manic defences, he recounted the event in a hilarious manner. Yet he did not immediately cut off and dismiss the disturbing feelings of being an abandoned child. He struggled, albeit briefly, with this painful emotional experience. As a result, he felt a bit more contained, and I believe that as a consequence of this Marta, too, felt that her experience of being left and rejected was in a way processed and contained by him at that moment. There were manic elements in the event and in the comical manner in which it was recounted, and Marta and Peter might have imagined that the frightened pedestrian felt that he, too, was easily disposable and fit to be run over. Nevertheless, there was also a fleeting intimacy and affection between them as they

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laughed, and a connection with their fear that they themselves were a “mental case”.

Brain like a chicken Marta, looking embarrassed, took out a small notebook and giggled. Peter said she was now going to read a novel to me. Marta said meekly, in her subdued but insistent manner, that she had made notes so she would not forget. Peter remarked scornfully that she had a brain like a chicken, and they began to argue. I intercepted and asked what the notes were about. Marta said she wrote about things that Peter had done to her. Now enraged, he asked if he hadn’t told me already that she had a brain like a chicken. I said that today Marta had brought her notes to prove how “bad” Peter was, but a few sessions ago Peter had brought a photograph of the dirty dishes Marta had left on the table. After a silence, Peter asked me to look at Marta and note her expression. Marta looked cut-off but when Peter spoke, she asked him with interest what expression he was referring to. Peter said that her expression had made him feel “very bad”, as if he had wronged her, and he found that unbearable. Marta said she had not meant it in that way at all. Peter then criticized her manner, Marta accused him of continually tormenting her, and they started to quarrel over this. Marta’s giggling was not manifestly aggressive, but she was provocative with her notebook and with what seemed like a black list of all his sins against her. Peter became derisive, and she further provoked his contempt with her subdued manner. At the same time, she insisted on her notebook, and although he responded by attacking, he was also helpless in the face of her pending denunciation. They were each involved in a cruel unmasking of the other. As I brought together their similar methods of discrediting and embarrassing each other, there was a moment of contact with reality and some recognition that both were engaged in this hurtful strategy. They treated each other harshly, and both could feel triumphant and superior to the other. However, they also struggled to

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contain psychotic anxieties; they feared having a damaged brain/ mind, and in the context of these anxieties the insult, “brain like a chicken”, was also Peter’s statement about his own mind. Equally, there was a shared anxiety about their own destructiveness and a persecutory guilt about the imagined and actual hurt and damage they inflicted. Peter was quite distraught, seeing Marta’s expression: as if he saw in her face a testimony of his destruction of her. He was in the grip of a persecutory guilt, implicated in her demise, in hurting and defeating her, and it seemed he was fearful of retribution for the damage he felt he had inflicted on her or on the inner object she represented at that moment.

Living in darkness Peter said things were moving and, repeating this a few times, added that it would still take a long time to arrive anywhere. Marta said that they had to sort out many things in the flat, but she, too, thought that things had improved. She appreciated that today he had purchased various things to complete the flat. But she then added that they still did not have lights. Peter became annoyed and insisted that they did have lights, but they did not have . . . and he could not find the word. I suggested a lamp shade. Peter then quite angrily asked if she wanted people to think they were living in darkness and had to go around with candles? I said that that was a very good image of their emotional experience: When there is more light, they become anxious and quickly fall back into darkness. Then they go round and round in the dark, constantly complaining about each other. They both laughed. There was silence, and I said that perhaps they did not know what to talk about unless they were arguing. Peter asked what else there was to talk about. Maybe they did not have anything to talk about. Marta thought she was very sensitive to criticism, and that her parents had always been critical. Her mother would tell her that she looked like a tramp. Peter thought that perhaps she did look like a tramp, maybe her clothes were not

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“good”, and that she did not take enough care of her clothes. Marta reminded him that last summer his cousin had told him he looked like a tramp. Peter said that this was because his cousin was stupid and did not understand how people here dress. Over there, they dress formally, and he had been wearing trainers. Marta added that there was a particular way of dressing like a tramp, but some people did not understand this. Peter asked angrily what style she was talking about, and this again led to an argument. At the start of this session, the mood had been mellower. Peter had thought that “things were moving”, implying that he felt less stuck in the relationship, and Marta had also shown some appreciation for the things Peter had bought. But when Marta said they had no lights, Peter became enraged, which spoiled the shared good experience. Compared with Peter, Marta was fluent in English: by commenting that they had no lights, she was probably undermining him, as well as their shared good experience of “things” improving. The situation was complex. There was also something inherently disturbing about being in the dark, and the reference to darkness had different connotations. In the context of their cultural background, a home without lights denotes shameful and abject poverty, and the discussion, later in the session, about being a tramp, homeless, or poor shows that there had been similar concerns. However, I think Peter’s reaction also suggests that, for him, and probably for both, the “dark” held something unknown and terrifying. At the time, my interpretation was from a different angle: I pointed out that it was the light that was intolerable. They could not bear to know about themselves and each other and had to keep themselves in the dark, which they managed by arguing. The constant arguments, in turn, ensured that they perpetually walked in the dark. I did not spell it out quite like this, but something did reach them. But the “light” of understanding was short-lived, and they started quarrelling again. The conflict centred on being perceived as a tramp, their common preoccupation and fear that they had nothing of value, that they were poorly endowed, ugly, dirty, impoverished, and thus doomed to be unwanted and abandoned.

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Not yet dead Peter began by saying that there was nothing to tell: they could only whinge and moan. Life was boring, and nothing really happened. Then he agreed: it was true that they were still alive and not yet dead! A longer discussion followed about how differently they did things and then how totally incompatible they were. Peter went on to say that when they bought the curtains yesterday, she did not consider his wishes. Marta laughed and said she wanted curtains without much pattern, whereas he wanted some totally patterned that would look really ugly. She thought he did not understand her, and such matters made him very touchy. Peter said she was saying that he was too old, and that time had passed him by. Marta denied this but laughed. Then they explained to me how they had bought the curtains. They arrived at the shop from different directions, and their only meeting point was at the entrance to the shop. The moment they entered the shop, they went off again in different directions. Peter said that even if they were held forcefully together with their heads right next to each other and were made to face in the same direction, they would still turn their eyes in opposite directions. I said they could not focus on the same thing at the same time. Marta, still laughing, said that they did agree on the curtains in the end. Peter said he had let her get on with it and hesitantly added, smiling warmly, that he did not understand these matters. When they were not engaged in some sort of conflict with each other, Peter and Marta felt that “life is boring, and nothing really happens”. Arguments provided a defence against the experience of emptiness and loneliness, and perhaps the heat of their quarrels reassured them that they were “not yet dead”. Arguments were undermining and hurtful, as well as exciting, since they could derive some pleasure out of triumph and power. But when arguing, they also had the concrete experience that they were together and involved with each other. However, being together was also felt to be intolerable and an entrapment. They described how their contact had to be limited and controlled: they had to come from different directions, meet at a certain point, and then quickly separate.

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And when they did connect, they were joined in a peculiar manner: their heads were held firmly together, while their eyes looked in different directions. The contact or meeting point at the “door” was essential, but equally it was dangerous and claustrophobic. Balfour (2005) discusses the different and complex dynamics of claustro-agoraphobic anxieties in couple relationships manifest in feeling “too close” or “too far apart” and anxieties about abandonment and engulfment; he points to “the link between claustrophobia and agoraphobia as two sides of the same constellation, linked to difficulties in the oedipal situation” (p. 70). In the case of Marta and Peter, their struggles in having to come together and then pull apart were more related to their difficulties in containment, and I return to this further on. If it happened that they were held together by some force, which Peter described as an external force, someone firmly holding their heads together, they had to find a way to separate, if only by turning their eyes in opposite directions. This force was projected into me, and they felt that I was holding their heads together and making them face the same thing at the same time. However, there was an internal force driven by both, pulling them together and apart. The pulling away provided a space, a sense that they were not enmeshed, taken over, obliterated, but the distance gave rise to fears of abandonment and loss. These opposing but simultaneous needs were acted out repeatedly, and they were constantly and concurrently pushing each other “away” and bringing each other “back”. If they focused on the same thing at the same time, such intimacy was felt to be intolerable. On this occasion they had seemed to agree on the curtains and had found a way to sort things out differently, and there was a warmth between them. In being able to chose the pattern, Marta felt she expressed a “good”, attractive, desirable aspect of herself, and I think that although Peter presented himself as “giving in”, he felt more potent in “giving her” the choice, and that he liked her “pattern”. It seems that there was an unconscious hope, and, as Peter said, it was true that they were still alive and not yet dead. I think they felt that I, too, in wanting to see them, was keeping something alive, and they both hoped that I would see something good in them. Stewart (1993) describes—although in another context—“the

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desire for a mother (breast) who can survive, contain and care for the unwanted projected aspects of the self” (p. 125), and I think there was also a hope that I would provide such a containing experience.

Unconscious relations and enactments Although this couple’s relationship was complex and multi-layered, I would like to discuss specifically the more primitive aspects of their relationship and the joint enactments, made manifest in their arguments. The couple were also able, albeit fleetingly, to relate on a more mature level, and there were moments when they could be more aware of their own or their partner’s emotional experience. My feelings about the couple also reflected these different levels, the sane and less sane parts of their personalities. I could find their quarrelling extremely exasperating, or alternatively it could leave me feeling drained, helpless, and confused about what was going on. However, I also quite liked this couple and I was saddened by their plight. In this section, I first consider the couple’s unconscious relations and the projective identification in the couple relationship. I then discuss some psychotic processes and the lack of differentiation between the self and the other. Finally, I outline the different functions of their arguments.

The couple’s unconscious relations and projective identification in the couple relationship In a couple relationship, partners have various shared experiences, and there are different ideas about what is “shared”, such as a shared unconscious phantasy, shared anxieties and defences, the “couple fit”, the shared projective system, and so on. Hewison (2014b), in a comprehensive and clarifying review of the development of the concept of the shared unconscious phantasy, summarizes:

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. . . shared unconscious phantasy has many facets and has many layers. It acts intrapsychically and interpersonally. It bridges or encompasses “marital fit” and “shared defence”. It is affected by external events. It is recreated in the transference relationship and is mainly known clinically through the countertransference. We work with it by focusing on the relationship, not the individual. We keep the couple in mind. We note how the partners relate to each other and to their marriage, and how a couple relates to us. [Hewison, 2014b, p. 32]

Bott Spillius (1988) points to a shift in object relations theory from structure to function, from thinking about part-objects such as the breast or penis to thinking about functions: It is capacities for seeing, touching, tasting, hearing, smelling, remembering, feeling, judging, and thinking, active as well as passive, that are attributed to and perceived in relation to part objects. [Bott Spillius, 1988, p. 5]

I shall try to elucidate the dynamics of “sharing” in a couple, taking into consideration the shift in focus from “structure” to “function”. A couple relationship is based on the relations between the internal objects and part-objects, both within the individuals and between them, and there is a continuous dynamic interaction at different levels: at the level of the individual and at the level of the couple. Therefore, what “connects” the partners in a “couple” are unconscious objects, internal figures, contents of the mind, and the processes, functions, or relations between the objects. From this perspective, Marta and Peter shared different internal figures, and their internal figures were in a dynamic and complex relationship. I refer to these complex unconscious dynamics as the couple’s unconscious relations. This formulation puts an emphasis on the processes, on the object relations, or on the relations between the internal figures in the individuals and the relations between them. When a couple is engaged in quarrelling, the partners have unconscious phantasies about what they are doing to the other and what the other is doing to them: these experiences stem from their individual internal object relations and, at the same time, from what they unconsciously communicate and stir up in each other. However, this does not mean that the experience of the external reality or the

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experience of the other in the couple relationship is affected only by the individual’s unconscious phantasies: both partners impact upon and effect changes in the unconscious phantasies of the other. Furthermore, couple relationships are not fixed, and the couple’s unconscious relations can pertain to different developmental levels, ranging from part-object to whole-object relations. Marta and Peter did not only jointly enact and sustain one particular “couple fit” or a shared unconscious phantasy: they also experienced different couple unconscious relations, since they struggled with different anxieties and defences, or different “couple fits”, that allowed for diverse experiences of themselves, the other, and their relationship. Catherall (1992) finds that couples can engage in repetitive projective identification cycles and that partners frequently have valences for similar issues. When partners are unable to contain some feelings in the domain where they experience problems, they induce each other to contain these unbearable experiences or parts of themselves. These projections can be contained, but if the recipient identifies with the projection, the disowned and problematic feeling of one partner will be enacted in the other, and vice versa. Ruszczynski (1993) describes the complex processes of projection and projective identification and the resulting introjection and introjective identification not only as being part of both normal development and a feature of a couple relationship, but also the defensive use of these processes in situations when the couple is involved in acting out their conflicts: Tensions within a couple relationship can therefore be thought of as internal conflicts externalised and acted out in the partnership. . . . The dynamic nature of the interaction is, as it were, between two partners’ split-off and projected parts of themselves, as located in the other, the force with which these are projected, and how they are recovered and dealt with by the other. [Ruszczynski, 1993, pp. 8–9]

Marta’s and Peter’s choice of partner was meaningful in a variety of ways. The way they experienced themselves, the other, and their relationship resonated at different levels. They had problems in containing their own feelings, they were unable to contain their partner’s feelings, and their relationship did not provide them with

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experience of containment. They were frequently caught up in both defending against and provoking various disturbing experiences in each other, and at those times it was not possible for them to have an insight into what was going on within them and between them. Steiner (1993) discusses the avoidance of understanding and the need for evacuation of the disturbing mental contents, and how for this purpose “Words are used, not primarily to convey information, but as actions having an effect on the analyst . . .” (p. 131). Marta and Peter used the words as “actions”, and in their quarrels they acted out—or, more to the point, they acted in—within the relationship.

Psychotic processes and the lack of differentiation between self and other In order to illustrate the complexity of primitive processes in the couple relationship, I present some ideas that I found helpful for understanding psychotic states of mind. Bion (1967a), in his “Commentary” at the end of Second Thoughts, refers to a “complex situation” in the “field of emotional force” where “individuals lose their boundaries as individuals”; he describes a particular disturbing experience that can arise in the psychoanalyst—or in anyone—while in contact with a psychotic patient: The psychotic patient is subject to powerful emotions and is able to arouse them in others; so at least it appears until the situation is examined more closely. The psycho-analysis of such a patient soon reveals a complex “situation” rather than a complex patient. There is a field of emotional force in which the individuals seem to lose their boundaries as individuals and become “areas” around and through which emotions play at will. . . . That state of mind is easier to understand if it is regarded as the state of mind of a group rather than of an individual but transcending the boundaries we usually regard as proper to groups or individuals. [Bion, 1967a, p. 146, emphasis added]

When Marta and Peter argued, they could create a particular emotional field similar to Bion’s “field of emotional force”, and they were in “the state of mind of a group” or perhaps more aptly in

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the state of mind of a couple. In the heat of the quarrel, Marta and Peter were engaged in excessive projective identification, and they “forced” parts of themselves into each other. At the same time, they endured the “forceful” entry of these projected parts, which resulted in a confusion of the boundaries between them. These processes evoked in them the experience of a split and fragmented inner world—feeling both damaged and damaging, controlled and controlling, intruded on and intruding—that is characteristic of psychotic states of mind: Psychotic patients have difficulty in bringing together and integrating different and split experiences of their objects and part-objects. This creates a paradoxical situation of having two irreconcilable experiences at the same time, being in two mutually exclusive “locations” in relation to the object, so that in phantasy patients can experience entering/being inside the object and engulfing/incorporating the object inside the self. Thus, these patients feel both invaded and invading, controlled and controlling . . . [Novakovic, 2013, p. 124]

The “complex situation” that Bion refers to, the confusion between self and the other, is manifest not only in psychotic patients: it can also be experienced by mental health professionals working with psychotic patients, and by people in general in a variety of situations when some very primitive processes predominate. For instance, when the psychotic patients from a psychiatric rehabilitation unit acted out, this had an impact on other people (Novakovic, 2013). The staff’s views about what happened in these incidents and their accounts of—as they phrased it—feeling shattered, crushed, or destroyed showed that patients’ acting out could evoke in them a transient breakdown in their ability to think and a blurring of boundaries between themselves and others. Staff reported that they felt subjected to a merciless control (by the patient and by other participants in the incident) and, simultaneously, that they themselves were cruelly controlling in subjecting “someone” to endure “something” that was intolerable. Likewise, Marta’s and Peter’s quarrels could evoke an experience of confusion about what belongs to whom, and they were driven to project and “ascertain” who was sane and who was crazy, or stupid, mean, dirty, ugly, and so forth.

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Functions of arguments There were different versions of the couple’s collusive projective enactments, reflecting different couple unconscious relations, and their arguments had different functions and meanings. The content of what was projected and what they identified with could change from moment to moment, like shifting sands, depending on the nature of their anxieties. I now consider the various unconscious relations and phantasies that propelled the couple’s arguments and what the couple achieved by arguing: that is, the various functions of their arguments, such as (1) defence against psychotic anxieties, (2) defence against persecutory guilt and loss, (3) enactment of sadistic attacks, and (4) a form of contact they strove to establish as a defence against the experience of abandonment. 1. Both were convinced that there was something very wrong with them, that they were deficient and hopeless in some way, and they were terrified of having some sort of a breakdown and “losing it”, of becoming a “mental case”, of having a “brain like a chicken”—that is, that they were mindless or mad. There was an aggressive and desperate struggle manifest in the forcefulness and tenacity of their projections, and consequently a lack of differentiation between self and the other. When these primitive processes predominated, there was a sense of confusion, and it became impossible to understand who was doing what to whom. The clown’s mask mimicked by Peter could be seen to portray splitting, lack of integration, and concurrently diverse states of mind. 2. One of the important functions of their arguments was to keep themselves in the “dark” about their different feelings. Here I refer to the terror of being destructive, as could be seen in Peter’s reading of Marta’s face and in his strong reaction to that. I think the acute and persecutory guilt of hurting and damaging the other, or the internal object that the other represented, was unbearable. The quarrels, attacks, and torments were more tolerable than the guilt about the hurt and damage they inflicted in phantasy and in reality on each other. The arguments also

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kept depression at bay, as well as the awareness of internal and actual losses that they could not mourn. As they said, if they did not argue, “what else was there?” 3. Their struggle was not only persecuting, but could also be exciting, and the excitement had a destructive quality. Rosenfeld (1987) argues that the primary purpose of a destructive narcissistic organization is not to defend against guilt and anxiety, but to sustain idealization and superiority. The destructive part, split off from the rest of the personality, is ruthless, while neediness is scorned and attacked. In addition to controlling the other for the purpose of managing their vulnerability, something cruel was enacted when they humiliated and denounced each other for their different deficiencies and misdeeds. For example, Marta brought her black book of Peter’s sins, and Peter brought a photograph of Marta’s dirty dishes, each wanting to expose and shame the other. 4. Another relevant function of the arguments was the management of their fear of rejection and abandonment. Their shared inability to do some simple tasks left them feeling helpless and dependent on each other in a rather concrete way, which almost guaranteed that they were repeatedly subjected to experiencing their helplessness, that their needs were ignored, and that they dropped out of each other’s mind. The arguments were reassuring, because they provided contact and passionate involvement with each other. In the vignette “Not yet dead”, the description of their entrance, meeting, and separation in the shop reflected a dynamic they often enacted. By arguing, they were constantly breaking away and re-establishing contact, and this left them feeling they had some control over the other, in that they could push the other away and bring them back. However, the functions of the arguments cannot be separated entirely, considering that the phantasies could be multiply determined. For example, they could project and identify with “garbage”, and in one instance this was linked to the fear of being like rubbish, unwanted and abandoned, and in another it was a hurtful, exposing, and sadistic attack. Yet in another context, the “garbage” denoted persecutory anxiety about dirtying and destructive

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attacks, when the couple was confused about being both like rubbish and “rubbishing”.

Some further thoughts: difficulties in containment, the primal scene, and the fear of change As mentioned earlier, the focus of this chapter is on the more primitive level of the couple’s relationship and their use of arguments for the purpose of acting out various anxieties that they were unable to contain. Britton (2003) describes difficulties that arise in the early stages of development and the failure of containment that is manifest in the anticipation of a mental catastrophe if two different points of view are integrated. From this perspective, Marta’s and Peter’s avoidance of facing the same thing at the same time can be seen as being caused by their inability to tolerate the meeting of their different minds, their dread of the difference and strangeness of the other. They repelled each other, as if meeting with another mind was intolerable. Britton refers to the fear of malignant misunderstanding, an intolerance of the difference that is like an “allergy to the products of other minds” (p. 177). The question is: how do partners “bear” the different reality of the other? For Marta and Peter, the threat posed by the other’s “otherness” was at various times managed by what Fisher (2013) refers to as the “near-delusional certainty” and the “so-called knowledge of the other” (p. 61) in the context of intrusive projections. The need for this couple to engage in quarrelling seemed not to stem from oedipal anxieties, although there were some struggles concerning who was going to be included or excluded in relation to a third party and this was expressed in their need to recruit me to side with them and thus exclude the other. However, it is interesting to reflect on what Marta and Peter enacted, as a couple “entity”—what kind of couple they jointly created, “embodied”, in quarrelling. Their demolition of each other, their inability to unite and separate, their experience of being stuck, imprisoned in mutual crippling dependency, their destructive, hurtful, exciting, triumphant attacks, and the b ­ lurring

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of ­ individual boundaries manifest in the confusion about what belongs to whom and who was doing what to whom—all these together is reminiscent of a phantasy of a couple conglomerate, some form of “coupling” where a lot of hurtful, dangerous, and exciting things are happening at the same time. Also, the pressure they exerted in having to pull away and to unite is suggestive of a primal-scene phantasy: the absolute necessity of being included and the terror of being trapped in something uncontrollable and dangerous. By arguing, the couple retained a status quo. At the very moments when they glimpsed how things could be different between them, they could spoil that experience. I do not think this was necessarily an expression of envy, although at times they were engaged in envious destructive attacks. They feared a different kind of connection, when they might have no control over the other. Fisher (1999d) points to this problem in the couples and discusses Meltzer’s idea of allowing the object its freedom: But the reality is that the desperate wish to “hold on” leads to a crushing, damaging, even destroying of just what is so desperately wanted and needed. The object, and the moment of experience of the object, Meltzer suggests, “satisfies only insofar as the object can be allowed its freedom” (Meltzer, 1978, p. 466). . . . Is this “detachment”, this “letting go”, a giving up of the “libidinal” attachment, to use Freud’s language? Or is it more like “giving the object its freedom”? [Fisher, 1999d, p. 280]

For Marta and Peter it was difficult to allow the other his or her “freedom”, and giving up control was felt to be profoundly dangerous. Cleavely (1993) describes the difficulties of risking change, because “it involves giving up the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, certainty for uncertainty” (p. 66). Giving up control can evoke persecutory anxieties, but letting go in the couple relationship is also inextricably linked to the experience of loss, be it “giving up of the libidinal attachment” or allowing “the object its freedom”. Anatole France (1881) reminds us that any change, desired or not, entails a certain loss: “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves: we must die to one life before we can enter another . . .” (p. 178).

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Conclusion In this chapter I discuss a couple who engaged in frequent quarrels and I explore the functions of their repetitive quarrelling. This couple enacted not only one particular unconscious relationship, but different couple unconscious relations that derived from their unconscious phantasies about themselves, the other, and the couple relationship, and their enactments, in turn, impacted on their conscious and unconscious experience of themselves and the other. Although the focus in this chapter is on one particular couple, and their more primitive levels of functioning, I think that couple relationships are in general characterized by different couple unconscious relations pertaining to their different levels of development. Furthermore, these relations can change from moment to moment and can be contained, known about, and worked through, as well as unconsciously enacted by actions of one sort or another, in ­couples’ verbal and non-verbal interactions.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Marta and Peter for giving their consent for the m ­ aterial from couple therapy to be used for teaching and academic publication. Every effort was made to protect their confidentiality by making considerable changes to disguise their background, current circumstances, and anything that might be recognizable in the clinical material, but I hope that the spirit of their interactions is conveyed as it emerged in the consulting-room. I am also grateful to Ronald Britton for his ideas about the difficulties in sharing the psychic space.

CHAPTER SIX

Couples becoming parents: a clinical example David Hewison

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or many new parents, the arrival of their first baby is not simply a delight and a celebration of their relationship, but also an event that troubles and disturbs them (Clulow, 1996). Couples are very often unprepared for the way in which the baby intrudes into their relationship and forces them to shift from being a couple into becoming parents. Some couples are able to manage the tension between being a couple and being parents, but many find it a great strain. Some find it nearly impossible to manage, others find it overwhelming in one way or another. For these couples, the baby is not a bonus, but a trial. They can experience the baby as smashing all the good things they had between them and replacing them with a very different kind of relationship. This is a relationship in which they are faced with the limitations of their commitment to each other and their ability to relate to more than one person at a time. In psychoanalytic terms, they are faced with an oedipal crisis in which the capacity to develop a space for a “third” is essential if they are to move to a real three-person relationship (Britton, 1989; Fisher, 1999c; Morgan, 2005; Ruszczynski, 1992). This requires the withdrawal of projections, the softening of identifications, and the loosening of shared unconscious phantasies (for a review of

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how these concepts are used in psychoanalytic couple therapy, see Hewison, 2014a, 2014b). In this chapter, I put theory to one side as I describe therapy with a couple seen in private practice, “Thomas” and “Maria”, who struggled with becoming parents and managing the transition from a twosome to a threesome. The couple have given permission, and the material has been extensively disguised to protect their privacy while conveying their experience.

Thomas and Maria Thomas and Maria told me that they had sought therapy because they felt distant from each other and distressed that their once happy relationship had become lifeless and unexciting. Maria put words to it: “We’re only going through the motions with each other now. There’s been nothing happening between us for the past three years, and I’m beginning to despair that nothing ever will—we’ll be like this for the rest of our lives. I can’t bear it. It’s not that I hate Thomas; it’s just that he’s changed into someone I can’t really recognize as the person I fell in love with and married. How can I relate to someone whom I don’t feel I know anymore?” Maria’s calm and level statement was met by Thomas shifting around tensely in his chair and muttering, “Yeah, like you’re just the same as you always were!” This was said not in order to enter into the conversation, but to stop it there. Obviously there was a lot of repressed feeling behind this, but one of the things that struck me about it was the indirectness of the communication—muttering is designed to be heard but not to be acknowledged as being said. It was one of those comments that puts the hearer at a disadvantage: if they ignore it, then both they and the speaker know that they have heard it and been hurt by it; if they respond angrily to the provocation, then they become the one who is at fault: the unreasonable, irrational one who gets angry all the time, leaving the speaker free of any blame for what has happened. Usually, these kinds of conversations escalate quickly, as they are intended to: either the hearer responds furiously, fired up by the comment, and battle commences between them, or, if they keep quiet, the speaker

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makes further attacks disguised as neutral or interested comments until the hearer is pushed into rage. What happened with Thomas and Maria was that the air between them became cold and apparently indifferent—they were showing me how their response was a bit different to that of other couples. They were trying to freeze each other into a bitter stuckness rather than heat things up between them. Maria’s comment had seemed neutral and descriptive as she began it, saying how things were between them, but she ended it with a description of Thomas as the one who had changed, and Thomas had reacted by preventing any possibility of exploring how they had got to this position. Maria’s subsequent silence showed me that she was also involved in keeping things stuck. Both of them had performed their familiar script in front of me, giving me a vivid picture of the current lack of movement between them. For my part, I felt curious about them and about this interaction, but I also felt that trying to get to anything more emotionally alive between them at this point would be to force them to do something that they were clearly telling me they had no intention of doing. The pressure on me was to move the discussion on to something safe, like ask them a question about something more factual and less controversial such as how they met or what their families of origin were like. I felt that I was unwanted and would be intrusive unless I behaved in exactly the right way. The problem was that I couldn’t work out what the right way was: what should I do to help the couple get through this, to enable to session to move on? I decided to name this and to see what happened. I said to the couple, “I know it’s difficult to begin to talk about the problems that face you but I wonder whether you are letting me know what it is like to be with someone who makes you feel that you are always going to get things wrong, no matter how hard you try to get it right, leaving you feeling that you have nowhere to move.” Maria said, “I don’t know what to do—that’s why we’re here. It just feels too much.” Thomas just looked pained but remained silent. I carried on. “And maybe more than just feeling that you don’t know what to do, you also both feel that even if you were able to work out what to do, your efforts wouldn’t be met with sympathy or understanding from your partner—instead, you would be met with blame; and so you have to keep things frozen

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between you. as otherwise you’ll be accused of being intrusive and unwanted.” Thomas seemed to suddenly wake up: “I do feel blamed. And I know that I blame her. I hate it. It never used to be like this.” Maria responded directly to him “Well, we had more time. There was just the two of us. We could do what we liked, and we can’t do that now. We’ve got Jimmy, and he comes first.” As the couple told me more about what this meant, a scenario unfolded in which the needs of the baby were paramount. They took precedence over anything else, and yet they were experienced by both as a tyranny that could not be resisted. Maria was the spokesperson for the “tyranny”, Thomas for the “resistance”. This took the form of a frantic necessity for the baby never to experience anything that might be a “negative” force in his life. The couple, like many affluent middle-class Londoners, were keen to avoid the dangers of processed food, factory farming, chemical absorption from troublesome fabrics and furnishings, unnecessary medications, pollution, and general, non-specific, bad karma. They saw themselves as just sensibly cautious, but there was an implacable insistence that they live an idealized but fuzzy kind of green, organic, “natural” lifestyle. In order to ensure that Maria’s breast milk was not tainted with anything impure, she refused to take antibiotics when she developed a chest infection a few months after Jimmy’s birth. She became more and more ill, eventually running a very high fever and hallucinating in a way that terrified Thomas. He thought she was going to die and called out the emergency doctor. Naturally, antibiotics were prescribed, and very quickly Maria’s fever broke and she began to recover. Instead of feeling grateful to Thomas, she openly resented the fact that her plans had been spoiled, and she began to scan Jimmy for any trace of an adverse reaction to the medication. Thomas was left feeling that even though he knew he had done the right thing, she was accusing him of doing the wrong thing. For her part, Maria came to realize that she did, in fact, feel grateful to Thomas for what he did, but she had to keep this secret as she couldn’t give him any hint that the “clean living plan” would be deviated from. If she didn’t keep the faith, no one would, and their hopes for baby Jimmy would be ruined. What this amounted to was that once weaning had happened, prior to Maria going back

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to work, Jimmy was to be fed only freshly cooked, organic food. There were no allowances made for the other demands of life on either of them, meaning that they entered into an extraordinarily demanding schedule in which one or the other had to get up early to prepare a balanced, nutritious steamed breakfast for him, while the other gave him a “baby massage” and then showed him “flash cards” with words on them, doing a version of “hot-housing” in order to stimulate his natural intelligence and give him an educational head-start in life. These tasks changed gradually as Jimmy got older, but they still had the same degree of necessity about them. This led to conflicts between the couple as their commitment to their baby conflicted with their own needs to get washed or dressed, or even to go to the toilet. Having both of them committed to the task of putting Jimmy’s needs first meant that any request for help between them was in danger of being seen as neglecting their baby, which was intolerable. Breakfast was taken at Jimmy’s speed, and he was allowed to choose from a range of dishes, each perfectly balanced, so that whatever he chose would be guaranteed to do him the optimum good. This inevitably took time, not only in the preparation, but also in the eating. Jimmy, of course, being uninformed about the careful thought behind this, would sometimes ignore the dishes put in front of him, and, when he wasn’t simply playing with them and throwing them around the kitchen, would apparently demand something else. This put Thomas and Maria into a quandary: first, they didn’t know what it was he wanted, and, second, they couldn’t prepare another perfectly balanced dish at will: they either didn’t have the time, or they didn’t have the ingredients. They tended to get extremely stressed at these points, feeling defeated and useless, and would inevitably end up fighting with each other. These fights were mere skirmishes in the morning, as they both had to get ready for the au pair and leave to get to work—they simply couldn’t afford to engage with each other in any way other than through vicious looks, muttered swear-words, and exasperated but strangled screams: a pattern of interaction with which I became very familiar, not just in description but also in their interaction with each other in the consulting-room for the first few months. The evening, however, was hell. Each of them enjoyed Jimmy and they were able to take great pleasure in him, but the timetable

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they had set up meant that the moment the first one of them came back from work, they were immediately plunged into a domestic routine of tasks to be achieved in relation to him, which meant that their own needs were put last. Apparently, they were both committed to this, but the resentment came out when the other arrived home later than expected—even if only by a little time. This was experienced as an attack, regardless of the reason for it. Events such as stoppages in the underground railway system were seen not as an ordinary part of life in London, but as a deliberate personal act. Jimmy’s evening was a repetition of the morning: a particular kind of play, optimum nutrition, bath, and bedtime that seemed to necessitate one of the parents—usually Maria—to sit outside his bedroom, waiting anxiously until he went off to sleep and then waiting some more in case he hadn’t really settled or was woken by a bad dream or other discomfort. While this vigil was happening, Thomas would have to deal with the soaking of the day’s cotton nappies and the washing of those that had been soaked the evening before (they had decided on both ecological and bad karma grounds that Jimmy would not have disposable nappies); the sorting of the “flash cards” for the next day, remembering to alternate in the correct order between nouns, colours, and numbers; the selection of vegetables for the morning’s breakfast, and the ordering over the internet of future deliveries, since they didn’t have time to shop; and, finally, the preparation of the evening meal for the two of them. Often they didn’t eat until 11 pm and dropped into bed immediately after, facing the strain of being awakened at 6 am by their child and having to fit in their morning routine before leaving for work at 7.30 am. When they did talk, they rowed. As a couple, they were furious with each other. They were also, of course, furious at their baby, but this couldn’t be admitted by either of them, despite Thomas’ role as the “resistance”. His fight against the tyranny took the form of “forgetting” to order food so that Jimmy only had one dish to eat at breakfast, or reading the paper instead of sorting the “flash cards”, so that Maria suddenly realized the next morning that she was repeating the cards from the day before—or, worse, that colours were mixed in with numbers. This would lead to her storming into the kitchen and hurling the collection of cards at Thomas, screaming at him that he was “a

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fucking useless bastard” and then not talking to him for a few days. Gradually, I was allowed to be told that both of them wanted to get out of the trap they had put themselves into with their child. This was a difficult thing to admit, since it felt as if they were about to be accused of child abuse if they did—Maria by me and Thomas by Maria. Eventually, they trusted me enough to tell me more about the conflict between what they felt they should manage, what was realistically possible, and what they really wanted to do. They had both initially given relatively bland descriptions of their own upbringing: Maria had been the middle child, with an older sister and a younger brother. Her parents had been hard-working but accessible to the children; life had not been easy, but neither had it been hard. She said she had had an ordinary sort of childhood, with happy memories of holidays on the coast. Thomas, for his part, had been the older of two brothers. His parents had been rather distant towards him: his father was considerably older than his mother, but they seemed to have a reasonable relationship, if inexpressive. Thomas had gone away to his father’s boarding school at the age of 7 and had managed by being enthusiastic at sports. Slowly, over time, a picture emerged of another kind of reality. Maria’s older sister had suffered from quite an early age from difficulties at school. As an adult this was diagnosed as a form of dyslexia, but at the time she was just seen as being “thick”. Maria was praised by her parents for not being like her sister, in a way that seemed to her to be an instruction not to get anything wrong. Her younger brother seemed not to have the same kind of pressure put upon him and was able to do moderately well at school and to concentrate on sports rather than on academic achievement— something that Maria felt suited him better. It wasn’t clear from what she said whether this was because her parents had learnt to manage their own expectations of their children and to see them for who they were and what they could manage, or whether it was because there were different rules for boys and girls. Girls were felt to be at a disadvantage and so needed to make the best of themselves, whereas things would just “fall into place” for the boys. What this seemed to have set up for Maria was a feeling of guilt towards both her sister and her brother: she felt guilty about having achieved more than her sister and so having got her parents’ approval in the face of their obvious disappointment with her

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sister’s failings, and she felt guilty towards her brother because she had hated and resented how easy it had been for him growing up. He seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted, without any adverse consequences—if he achieved, he was praised; if he didn’t, he was accepted just as he was. She found a variety of ways of tormenting him when he was little; she only stopped when he grew big enough to fight back. Her current relationships with both her husband Thomas and her son Jimmy were patterned on a feeling that she found difficult to acknowledge: that her own parents had let her down and that she was committed to not repeating with Jimmy any of the struggles she and her siblings had had to go through. She wasn’t going to repeat her parents’ mistakes. In her determination to do this, she felt that Thomas was her ally when he was “on task”, and that he was her enemy when he was not. At worst, in her mind he became a mix of her neglectful parents and her selfish brother—he deserved everything she said to him as a result, for not only was he being like them, but, more than this, he was not protecting her from reexperiencing the feelings of self-blame and frustration that she’d known so well when she was growing up and which she’d sworn she’d put behind her. She could be vicious and scathing of him. Thomas, for his part, revealed that being sent away to school had left him confused about the kinds of demands that were being made on him in the relationship. He talked about how his mother had cried when the decision was made to send him off, but how his father had told him to “keep a stiff upper lip and be a man” when his parents left him at school. He said he never did cry, but his younger brother did when his turn came to enrol there. He wasn’t able to describe much about his relationship with his parents, initially saying that he had got on well enough with them and then, in a kind of typical English understatement, saying that things had been “a bit difficult” at times. Translated into ordinary emotionally rich language, it turned out that his father had been a fiercely driven man who had excelled in conquering new challenges in offshore sailing, exploring, and mountaineering and who spent little time at home. He, in turn, had had an absent father who was a senior military officer, and there was a strong family tradition that the oldest son entered the armed forces and the younger ones entered a profession. Thomas’ father could not understand how

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it was that his son had not turned out like he should have done: although Thomas did well at sports, like his father had done, he did not excel. He was never made the captain of any team, nor did he win trophies at school Sports Days. Thomas’ father had died when Thomas was 17, and both of them knew that that he had been disappointed in Thomas. Thomas had, he admitted, been afraid of his father and had sought protection from his mother who—in fact—had not been able to provide it. From the little Thomas could tell about his mother, it seemed that she had been initially captivated by the glamour of his father’s achievements and had been swept up in the world of fame and excitement that he promised. Thomas’ mother was twenty years younger than his father, and she was little prepared for the austere demands that international sporting competitions placed on competitors and their families and even less prepared for the absence of a real emotional connection with her older husband. No sooner than she had become pregnant when her husband left her to go on an expedition to South America. He was back in time for the birth, was satisfied that he had a son, and then he was off again. Thomas’ mother gradually realized that she was another kind of trophy for her husband: beautiful, young, fertile. She doted on Thomas but suffered bouts of depression, which meant that a lot of Thomas’ day-to-day care was taken up by nannies, hired by his father from a prestigious but rather severe nursery-nurse academy on one-year contracts. The moment Thomas became attached to one of these, they would leave, and he would have to start again. He learnt later that his mother had tried to protest about this pattern but was ignored and overruled by his father, who insisted that this was the family tradition, and it would help Thomas grow up independent and strong. What this seemed to mean for Thomas was that he didn’t know how to be a parent in conjunction with his partner. In many respects he seemed to treat Jimmy either as a version of his younger brother—so that they were siblings together and became a unit for protection against the hard or unreliable parents—or he treated Jimmy as an extension of himself, seeing all his unmet needs in Jimmy and wanting alternately to meet them or treat them as though they didn’t matter. When Maria accused Thomas of “neglecting” Jimmy, she was partly correct: a bit of him felt as his father had and saw Jimmy as being spoiled by all the attention

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and care he was getting. This part of Thomas felt that Jimmy, like him and like his father before him, just needed to toughen up, stop all this “crying nonsense”, and deal with the world full on. In addition, Maria and her demands were taken by Thomas as being a version of the distant and imperious father who set out impossible targets and whose disdain was both feared and inevitable. It was against this internal father that Thomas’ “resistance movement” was organized; such was the perceived strength of his tyrannical opponent that much of the time the resistance was passive, taking the form of not doing things right or on time or in the way wanted, rather than actively standing up and opposing what was going on. Sometimes Jimmy was felt to be the collaborator with the tyrant, sometimes its victim, and Thomas’ relationship to him fluctuated as a result. Maria was also experienced as the beautiful and desirable mother who could never be consoled, and Thomas could at times be tender and gentle with her, but only when she was herself depressed and turned inwards. When she blamed him rather than herself, he dug his heels in and turned off his empathic openness to her. As these things became clearer in the therapy, what also became clearer was the nature of their initial attraction. For Maria, Thomas had been someone she could talk to about her fears and who always responded in a way that made her feel protected, unlike other men she’d known. He did seem to carry with him an air of competence and ability to get things done, as though the world was entirely manageable. She welcomed this, as it meant the possibility of not having to repeat the failures of her parents’ relationship and not having to fear that she was damaging, as she’d felt she had been to her sister. She also felt that Thomas could withstand whatever she did to him, making her safe against her own feeling of destructiveness. Thomas was a “real man”. For Thomas, Maria was someone who not only wanted him for himself but valued him highly, seeing him as an ally against all sorts of threats—practical as well as personal. He loved her vulnerability, and he particularly loved her loving response to him when he soothed her. At the same time, he shared her determination to do things differently from their parents, to live their own life free from demands or expectations from others. In many respects they had chosen each other in order to band together against the world. This meant that

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they suffered all the classic difficulties of what has been called a “babes-in-the-wood” couple (Mattinson & Sinclair, 1979): a need to project difficulties outwards, away from the relationship and into the environment around them, which they then had to either protect themselves against or work on to make the world a better place. Not coincidentally, both of them worked in jobs that were, in different ways, about bettering the lot of others. Couples like this are often unprepared for the arrival of children, as there is then so much less space in the relationship to see all the difficulties and bad feelings as happening outside: children bring their own demands and needs right into the relationship, and both parents are forced to confront elements of themselves that they had projected outwards. This faces them with a developmental opportunity and a threat. Maria and Thomas had begun to have difficulties the moment she became pregnant, as it was at this point that the need to make everything right for their future child impacted upon their relationship as a couple. In a sense, the moment of pregnancy, rather than of birth, was the moment they shifted from being a couple into being parents, and it was a fault-line in their relationship. The therapy helped them to see the way that Jimmy was a repository for their own unfulfilled childhood needs: it wasn’t simply that in meeting his needs they could meet their own, but also that they could turn the defeats and set-backs that they had experienced from their parents into successes. In becoming parents themselves, they felt that they could somehow redeem their own parents. Thomas described this when he said, “I had a vague idea that if I could find a way of doing things differently to my father, then in a way I’d be proving to him that he hadn’t got it all wrong, even though I know that I really would have liked him to be there for me in a very different way to how he lived his life. I was becoming a dad for him, in a way.” It was this mixed awareness of the needs of their child and the internal needs of their parents that brought so much pressure to bear in the relationship between them. The way I understood it, getting it wrong was fatal to their attempts to deal with their rage and hatred towards three generations: their parents, who had let them down but whom nonetheless they loved; themselves, struggling to humanize the feelings they had without falling into despair or triumph; and their son, who had broken into their cosy, loving relationship and disturbed them

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in all sorts of ways, not least of which was their realization of their envy towards what they were able to give him. It was this that I’d sensed in the countertransference when I met them for the first time, though of course it took a long time for all this to become clear in the therapy. The feeling of having to get everything right but not knowing how to do this, and so feeling frozen and unable to move, was terrifying to them. They had responded to it in ways that were characteristic for each of them: Maria was active and forceful, planning and organizing in a rather manic way; Thomas was split into a display of apparent cooperation and agreement with her, together with a hidden but effective refusal to admit what was going on around him. She controlled her anxiety about becoming a parent by battening it down so that it couldn’t be said to exist, and he controlled his anxiety by refusing to admit that he was actually a parent, as though Jimmy were a kind of interesting and amusing temporary addition to the household, not a tiny baby highly dependent on them both. The therapy was indeed intrusive and unwanted. Although the couple had sought it out, they hated the fact that they were having it, and realizing this helped me to understand more about what becoming parents had meant to them. Some couples are able to look for help when they need it because they have always been able to do so: their upbringing was such that they were encouraged to seek assistance and not punished or humiliated because of it. These tend to be couples who feel freer to recognize that something is not as they wish in the new family they have formed between them and their child when they become parents for the first time. They tend to have a network around them, making use of ante-natal classes and parent support groups as well as their friendship network and family. Thomas and Maria were not quite like this: help was usually something they gave to others needier than themselves, not something they needed. Thomas and Maria had to work hard in the therapy to realize the hidden meanings of their wishes for Jimmy and their behaviour towards him and each other. Maria had to relinquish some degree of control, and Thomas had to pick it up in a way that acknowledged her needs and sensitivities. This was not an easy thing to manage, as I have indicated. It meant, however, that Thomas had to grow up and admit that he was no longer a young man with a girl-

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friend, but a father with a wider responsibility: one that couldn’t be dipped into and out of according to whim but was constant and ever-demanding. It also meant that Maria had to accept that she could never prevent entirely the world breaking in and hurting Jimmy; he would have to go to school, he would find the limits to his own abilities without her, and he would make mistakes and get himself into scrapes in a world that was likely to be indifferent to his interests. What she could do, however, was to ease off the level of tension and exhaustion at home by going to work part-time and taking on more of the ordinary tasks of child care. Gradually, they both came to see how they had put their couple relationship on ice when they discovered that they were to become parents, and how this had been essential for them as a couple because of the way that they had been using it as a kind of retreat from themselves and their histories. It seemed that the sudden tumble into being over-burdened parents had protected them from the ways in which their couple relationship was not flexible enough to manage the arrival of a third person in it. The couple relationship disappeared in order for an approximation of a parenting relationship to take its place. The fact that this had lasted so long was a credit to the couple’s staying-power and the degree of commitment and energy they had at their disposal, which was being used in the service of pushing away realistic anxieties. We all knew that things had really changed between them some four months after Maria had gone part-time at work. The au pair announced that she was leaving to go travelling with her sister; and, rather than becoming frantic at what this meant for all their careful plans, Maria was able to take time to consider what she wanted to do, consulting Thomas and bearing Jimmy’s needs in mind. Thomas was clear that they would be having a proper leaving party for the au pair, on the grounds that she was a significant figure in all their lives (not only Jimmy’s), and that they would prepare Jimmy well for it. He was determined that she would not simply disappear and be replaced as if by magic by another au pair, as had happened to him. Together, Thomas and Maria worked out what they wanted to do: they would not try to do it all by themselves, they were looking to their brothers and sisters for help sharing childcare. Maria and her sister-in-law took it in turns to look after both families’ children a couple of days a week. This freed up

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Maria to do some of the things that Thomas had been responsible for when he came in from work, meaning that their reunion each working day was easier and more enjoyable for both of them. They began to take more pleasure in Jimmy as a small child, not as a reminder of all the potential ills in the world that needed to be battled with. They also began to take more pleasure in each other, and one summer’s morning they announced that Maria was pregnant again; their shared joy was palpable and heartfelt. They were now, after two and a half years of therapy and a great deal of pain and difficulty, able to come together as parents who were also a couple becoming parents as if for the first time. The story of Maria, Thomas, and Jimmy is an example of the kind of emotional work needed in making the shift from being a partner to becoming a parent. It shows us many of the features that exist in most couple relationships when children are born. These include such things as the need to rework the experience of their own parenting and the ways in which their own parents’ wishes and abilities were enabled or thwarted by life. There is a repeat and a chance to change the parenting they had received as babies and children. There is also the need to come to terms with the presence and effect of older and younger siblings on their experience of family life when they were growing up. This is particularly important when second and subsequent children are born, but we can see how this was an issue for Thomas and Maria after only one child. In addition, the process of moving from being solely partners to being parents is strongly affected by the presence and influence of all their hopes and wishes for their new offspring, including their imaginative awareness of the difficulties and delights of life and how these will affect their growing child’s life (Raphael-Leff, 1996). The future child in the mind of the couple will influence the way the pregnancy is experienced, as well as how the couple cope with the real baby’s arrival in their lives. If they have been able to mentally conceive the baby with excitement and pleasure—as well as with a sense of reality regarding of the demands that the baby will make on them as individuals and as a couple—then the actual conception and growing to term, and the labour and birth, will already be known about in a contained way. The process of the pregnancy will be seen as an adventure, and the baby will be awaited with an increasing sense of impatience and longing to meet this new part

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of their lives. The more the future baby can be thought of as an individual with his or her own personality and engagement with the world, the more the parents will be prepared for the extraordinary experiences that the baby will put them through from the very beginning, and the more the mother will be able to adapt to her individual baby’s needs, supported by a partner who can bear to help mother and baby adapt to each other without feeling too shut out and abandoned. The ability to move from being parent to partner and back to parent again, without feeling trapped in either way of relating and without using it as avoidance of what is needed at any one point, is key to establishing a secure family.

Conclusion The transition from being a couple to being parents is clearly a moment of extreme stress and change. Over and above the simple fact of another, highly dependent, human being arriving on the scene, there is the more complex fact that being “parents” is not the same as being “a couple with a child”. The phrase “a couple with a child” assumes that the relationship between the adults can exist entirely separately from the new baby, and that it is possible to imagine that there is only a two-generation relationship involved: adults and child. It is true that there are families that try to live like this, and we tend to see their children in our consulting-rooms as adults—often as individuals, sometimes as part of a couple and, if they have them, with relationship problems with their children. The phrase “parents”, on the other hand, assumes a deep relationship with the child and yet still some relationship between the adults involved—they both have to find a way of parenting. It automatically invokes a multi-generational relationship: “parenting” runs down through the generations, and it is impossible to think of parenting without thinking of a child in a way that is possible when thinking of a couple. A couple can be isolated from another person, parents cannot. This remains the case even if the “parents” are not biologically related to the child—if they adopt, or enter into a relationship with someone who has a child already, or if the child is born through egg or sperm donation, or if the child

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has been c­ arried by a surrogate mother. And it applies whether the parents are gay, lesbian, or heterosexual. In each of these variations of being a parent certain things are constant, as I tried to indicate in the case of Thomas and Maria; other things are more unique to each couple. It is stating the obvious to say that couple relationships—particularly when couples become parents—involve oedipal dynamics in all sorts of ways (Grier, 2005). The therapeutic question is, which of these need to be highlighted in the particular work with any particular couple? For some, it will be the hatred of otherness that is getting in the way of dependent relating (Colman, 2005); for others, the impact of transgenerational trauma and loss will need to be painfully unpicked (Meyers, 2005), or stages of developmental stuckness with their associated projective and introjective defensive processes will need to be understood and worked with (Berg & Jools, 2004, 2007; Morgan, 1995). For Thomas and Maria, it was also being able to disentangle themselves from the patterns and expectations that their parents had had of them and their siblings, and from the ways in which they had responded in a fixed way to these, such that they were prevented from relating flexibly to each other as adults, away from their families of origin (Lyons & Mattinson, 1993). Their pre-child couple relationship had not been developmental as such (Colman, 1993); rather, it had been a respite from the pressure of their internal and external families of origin, and was a place in which bad feelings were kept away—not least, by being projected into parents (something that they, as a couple without children, had not been, by definition). The moment Maria became pregnant, their shared defence broke down, and the couple were under siege. Helping couples to see the ways in which things that had felt good between them before they all turned bad were, in some ways, worse than the excruciating present state is a difficult undertaking and requires the therapist to be aware of their own relationship to bad feelings. Schafer (2003) has identified a damaging “Eleventh Commandment” of being “mentally healthy”, as he puts it, according to which negative or painful emotions are not to be tolerated; everything has to be positive and wholesome, as otherwise guilt and anticipated punishment become overwhelming, as it was with Thomas and Maria’s relationship to Jimmy. The therapist can be experienced as cruel and hurtful, rather than

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helpful, and inevitably the kinds of defences that such couples bring to therapy stimulate a degree of frustration and reaction in the therapist. The task is to manage to find a balance between the need to continue to expand the couple’s repertoire of painful feelings while respecting their need for defences. The therapist must not be too tentative, as otherwise the couple will not feel that their feelings can be accepted and coped with (a kind of repeat of what they experienced with their parents), and this anxiety will continue to prevent them from meeting their child’s feelings and gestures appropriately (Colman, 1995). Therapists must also keep an eye on their own sadism and ensure they keep pace with the leading edge of what the couple can manage, so supporting the development of the couple, rather than forcing it. Key to this is a sensitivity to the joys and losses in becoming parents, the good and bad things in experiences of being parented, and the mix of continuity and change through the generations.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Couple and family dynamics and triangular space in group psychotherapy David Vincent

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roup psychotherapists will recognize the feeling of a ­psychotherapy group beginning to form. The group begin to work together as a group, and the psychotherapist, perhaps for the first time, experiences a countertransference feeling to the group-as-a-whole, instead of to the individual members of the group. It could also be described as the establishment of a group therapeutic alliance, a working agreement, or, in Bion’s terms, the group is beginning to address the “work-group function” (Bion, 1961, p. 143). Individual psychotherapists will sometimes say, at a similar early point in treatment, that they now feel that they have a “patient in the room”, and the implication for both individual and group psychotherapists is that treatment can now begin. How does this come about? The argument that follows is that in order to reach this first developmental stage, an analytic group, gradually, and with difficulty, develops a complex and changing set of relationships that allow the work-group to function and help the group to begin to work analytically with itself.

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Couples and families in group development The principal element in this process is the continuous back-andforth movement in the group between couple dynamics and family dynamics, between two-person and three-person relating. The first, and most important, stage of this aspect of group development is the initial move from couple dynamics and two-person relating to family and three-person relating and the consequent achievement, for the first time, of what Britton, in individual psychoanalysis, calls “triangular space”, in the relational life of the group (Britton, 1989, p. 85). The group psychotherapist’s countertransference feeling of the group establishing, or becoming, itself for the first time seems to arise out of this developmental shift by the group-as-a-whole. Once this first move into “triangular space” has been fully experienced by the group and the group psychotherapist, a number of things follow: first, oedipal love, hatred, and jealousy emerge; second, sibling love and rivalry become active; and, third, the demands of social reality, through the “social unconscious”, appear and come alive in the group. (Hopper, 2003, pp. 126–161). The group then becomes open to a wider and richer range of potential experience. What is at first lost is the intimacy of the couple relationship, and the group is always therefore ambivalent about this first move to three-person relating; the consequent feeling of loss has to be worked through and mourned. When the process of mourning has begun and if the group can learn from the experience, then the group-as-a-whole becomes more robust and flexible and can begin, separately and together, to move back and forth between twoperson and three-person relating, between couple and family; this then becomes the characteristic movement, and source of strength, of a good-enough psychotherapy group. This important process is described in more detail by using extracts from psychotherapy groups. The longer examples are from groups conducted over 15 years ago. The groups gave permission for me to write about them, and identifying material is, in addition, disguised. In one group, which had been very small for a few months, the three members became very attached to one another in two overlapping pairs: one of the two men, and the other,

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more intense, of one man and the woman. All of them had had abandoning or depressed fathers and difficult childhoods, and all of them alternately idealized or felt abandoned by me. They used the group well for a while and resisted the idea of new members. Some months later, when the group was full, one of the men began to refer to these few months with the three of them as “the golden age”; quite soon afterwards he left the group in a rage, having never worked through and learned from the loss of intimacy.

Two-person relating in the group In normal two-object couple relating, the group members become interested in and sensitized to one another as individuals. Group members might discover or re-acquaint themselves with an estranged or imagined sibling, lover, or parent in the group analyst or in another group member. Further to this, as the group develops, individual group members can also locate a lost or damaged object in other group members. They can use the other in the couple to keep and maintain the damage away from them, or attempt to heal the damage in the other. This process may explain the kind of difficult couple relationships that sometimes arise in groups, whereby both patients seem stuck forever in one unchanging couple relationship, although they can change and move in other two- and three-person relationships. Individual members can experience and helpfully use, in the group, long sequences of couple relationships that both re-visit the past and attempt new ways of relating. At any one time there will be a very wide range of possible couple relationships in the group: this group member is a sister, for example, that one a parent or a child. These couple relationships can be rich, intense, and persistent over the life of the group, and although they are sequential, following one after the other, each two-object relationship is entire in itself. The group is, of course, present and often very interested, but it is there essentially as an audience to a couple, not as part of the relating. At the same time intimacy, either loving or hating, between a couple in the group is an instigator of envy, longing,

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jealousy, curiosity, and voyeurism. This is a good example of how the continuous interchange between two- and three-person relating enriches the group. Two group members, for example, may have an intimate exchange in the group. Another group member might watch them greedily and voyeuristically, another with jealousy, another with affectionate approval, and yet another might watch the other group members who are watching the couple, feeling interested in or excluded from the other observers’ close interest in the intimate pair.

Three-person relating in the group In three-person—or, perhaps more correctly, three-object—relating in the group, the relationship with the other is always seen and experienced in terms of the relationship with the third, which can often be the group-as-a-whole or a part of the group. The group is therefore actually or potentially always part of the three-object relational field. Following the achievement of “triangular space” and the consequent ability to move continuously between two- and three-object relating, the group-as-a-whole becomes more mature and reflective as individual members become interested in and sensitive both to one another and to the relationships between them. The group becomes increasingly able to work with confrontation, argument, and strong feelings and as a result begins to acquire the confidence to look inward and to concentrate on the relationships within the group, in the present moment. In a group that is working in this way, the individual members internalize this mature process of three-object relating and the ability to move in and out of both two- and three-person relating. Just as in individual development, so the group, while developing and maturing in “triangular space”, can also turn as a whole to intimate two-person relating, most obviously at moments of change or crisis: members leaving or joining, breaks, illness, or loss. But, in fact, the group oscillates continuously, moment by moment, between the two states of mind—twoobject and three-object relating—and it is helpful for the group psychotherapist to be aware of this and to help the group to see it.

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Levels of communication in group analysis: Foulkes The psychotherapist’s awareness that the individual patient is ready to work can be construed in different ways in individual psychotherapy: for example, the deepening of the transference or the establishment of basic trust, a secure base or a treatment alliance. All of these also apply to group psychotherapy within the complexity of the multiple transference and real-world relationships to the group psychotherapist, to individual group members, and to the group as a whole. This was clear to Foulkes: “The group-analytic group is essentially a transference group. Members can transfer, corresponding to their own unconscious phantasies, not only to the therapist but to each other” (Foulkes, 1964, p. 74). The difference arises from this complexity in the interpersonal field of the group, and the consequent wide range of relational and communicational styles that may be in play in the group at any one moment. Foulkes saw the group as always operating on four levels. At the “current level”, the group is felt to be part of the community and society, of ordinary everyday life. At the “transference level”, the level of mature object relations, the group is felt to consist of whole objects: parents, siblings, partner, lovers, and work colleagues. At the “projective level”, the group is experienced as composed of part-objects. At the fourth level, the “primordial level”, the group consists of collective primordial images. Importantly, in his description of the projective level, Foulkes says: “Here other members reflect unconscious elements of the individual self. The group represents as outer what are in truth inner object relations” (Foulkes, 1964, p. 114). In the same section he then says that: “Not only may individuals embody a part of the self, but the group as a whole may do so. The group often represents the mother image. The body image is reflected and presented in the group and its members” (Foulkes, 1964, p. 115). This is the basis for a rich description of the potential and actual complexity of group processes. At any one moment each member of the group may be relating to any of the other individual members of the group, to sub-groups of members, to the group as a whole, and to the group analyst, each in a significantly different way.

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One member might, for example, be talking to the group, if they had arrived late, about the poor state of public transport, and how hard this is for NHS patients trying to keep their appointments, at the “current level”. At the same time, they may be worried about those members of the group whom they liked feeling let down by their lateness, and they might feel that those in the group whom they do not like will be unpleasant or critical of their lateness. At this moment some of the other members might also be felt to be just like members of their family of origin, who always disapproved or who were always tolerant. This may bring in the group analyst, who has, at this point, probably said nothing, but who now may be recruited into the role of a harsh or a forgiving parent, partner, or manager. All this is, of course, at the “transference level”. Further to this, at the “projective level”, other group members, as individuals or as sub-groups, the group analyst, and the group as a whole might, at this moment, or always, represent for individual patients aspects of their own unexpressed aggression or tendency to self-criticism, parts of self or internal objects. Foulkes mentions in this context that the group can represent an image of the mother: a function of the “projective level”.

Foulkes and Bion For Foulkes, and also in later group-analytic work on the concept, the image of the group as mother has a positive feeling of a good containing maternal object. The other side of this imagery is described most clearly by Bion, who links “very primitive phantasies about the contents of the mother’s body” to the deep anxiety experienced by the group about investigating and understanding the group: “For the group, as being the object of inquiry, itself arouses fears of an extremely primitive kind” (Bion, 1961, p. 162). Bion here explicitly follows Klein and her early investigations of the important connection between sadism, the epistemophilic instinct, guilt, and the early Oedipus conflict (Klein, 1928, p. 188). This raises some of the complications concerning the relationship between Foulkes’s and Bion’s thought in modern group analysis.

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For Foulkes, influenced by the sociologists of the Frankfurt School, the group was a “social fact”—more than the sum of its parts. It was essentially maternal and life-giving, as exemplified by his famous maxim—which in 1948 he called “the Basic Law of Group Dynamics”—that: “collectively they [the group members] constitute the very Norm from which, individually, they deviate” (Foulkes, 1948, p. 29). For Bion, however, the group is a “phantasy”—in fact, a regression—and: “The belief that a group exists, as distinct from an aggregate of individuals, is an essential part of this regression” (Bion, 1961, p. 142).

Difficulties in three-object relating The move from two-object to three-object relating, which seems to be so important in the establishment and development of a strong working group culture, is exemplified in the account of the long group-analytic treatment of one complex patient. But, first, what happens in a group that cannot make the move into three-object relating? This is a brief account of one such group, which took place many years ago in an NHS psychotherapy clinic. There were at that time numerous referrals, many of whom were vulnerable patients, with long histories of various kinds of psychiatric and psychological interventions for intractable depression, traumatic histories, unexplained medical symptoms, or personality disorders. The assessing clinicians found that a number of these patients should be in long-term analytic groups but thought that they needed a short-term individual psychotherapy, of three to six months, before starting in a group. The assessors felt that it would be helpful to settle these patients by giving them individual care and attention before they joined a group. The result was, not surprisingly, that a long specialist waiting list built up. These patients were not taken on by the individual psychotherapists, who did not want to do short-term work, nor by the group psychotherapists, who wanted to fill places in their groups immediately. I decided to see all eight

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patients individually for about three months and then start them together in a group. I expected that we could establish a working relationship in the individual psychotherapy and work with their fantasies, fears, and expectations about the group. At first the sessions seemed to go surprisingly well, but later I realized that I was stuck, with the patients, in an idealizing countertransference and a shared unconscious fantasy that this would be a good, interesting experience, and that, above all, we did not have to worry about the group. The group, however, when it started four months later, turned out to be extremely difficult, but in an unexpected way. The group members were completely unable to relate to one another and could only relate to me, except where the experience of one member concretely echoed that of another, and then they could speak to one another, albeit briefly. Mostly they gave rather dull accounts of their week or talked enthusiastically about their dreams. In fact, I have never worked with any other group that talked about so many dreams. Every week there was a long, vivid account of a recent dream, but all of the dreams were told directly to me, and no group members ever commented on the recounted dreams. They would listen politely to one another and then describe a dream of their own or talk about recent events at work or at home. Individually the dreams were rich and at first very interesting, but whatever I did, I could not get the group to talk to one another about anything, least of all the dreams. My comments and interpretations were received amiably but ignored, unless they were comments about an individual, in which case they were received with interest and gratitude by the patient in question and ignored by the others. Rather slowly, I began to realize that the dreams were an increasingly desperate attempt by the patients to hold on to individual psychotherapy with me and to deny the reality of the group. It was, therefore, a rather unusual example of a group-wide projective identification in which the group members separately, but also together in unconscious collusion, projected into me a fantasy that we were really in individual psychother-

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apy, and that the group could be wiped out, almost by negative hallucination, for the time that we were together. The strength of the fantasy—which was, for a while, in itself quite gratifying for me—was such that I could not see what was happening for some months. By the time that I began to understand, the group itself was getting bored and uncomfortable, but rather stuck. We worked at this for some time, and it did change gradually, but it gave rise to a long-lasting, angry depression, full of dissatisfaction and envy, which persisted in this group for some years, even through changes in membership, because this difficult culture had been set so firmly in the first several months. This is described at some length because it is an unusually strong example of the denial of the reality of the presence of the group by avoidance of any kind of relating except two-object relating, and the seductive power of this to the group analyst. The angry depression that resulted from the group’s move to three-object relating is also an important feature. There will always be a depression as a result of the move from two to three. This depression is often at first angry and full of envy and grievance: it has to be worked through in the group, together. This can lead to a profoundly important development, for when it is worked through, then the group can fully experience the change and begin to mourn the loss.

The development and use of group triangular space The next example concerns the course of treatment of one patient in another long-term group at the same clinic as the previous example. The group had a different culture, also established in its early years: unusually tolerant of disturbance, and always with a strong capacity to think and talk about troubling experiences, thoughts, and fantasies. This capacity continued through the long life of this group, through several complete changes of membership. The

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group ran for 24 years, and this patient was in the group during the middle period. The patient, whom I will call Susan, was in her early forties and happily married to a man of whom the group thoroughly approved. This is important, because it is often the case in long-term groups that the group takes a great interest in, and expresses strong views about, the frequently mentioned partners or lovers of group members. This is another example of the complex relationship between two- and three-person relating in the group and the group’s involvement in the couple relationships of the group members, both inside and outside the group. These views about the group member’s partners are probably often quite reliable, although they will, of course, have never met the partner. They arise from the group’s unconscious divided identification with the individual patient’s internal argument, which is itself, in the group, often focused on, or projected into, the difficult partner or lover. The most common example of this would be a patient complaining to the group about the bad behaviour of a partner. Invariably the group’s first response is to take different sides. One person will vigorously encourage the complaining patient to get rid of the partner immediately, often using a painful example from their own experience. Another patient will then advise the opposite, and a third patient will counsel compromise. If the patient is a woman troubled by a difficult partner, male or female, the three parts of her internal argument will usually be taken by three women, and the men will usually stay silent, confining themselves to some eyebrow-raising and eye-rolling. If the men do intervene, it is, in my experience, always to take a protective and rather unthinking paternal role on behalf of the troubled patient. If the patient in a difficult relationship is a man, then both women and men will take on the internal argument. This is a clear example of Foulkes’s concept of the “projective level”, but in a more unobtrusive, moment-by-moment way this dynamic is always operating in the group, with the different aspects of each patient’s expressed internal dilemmas and conflicts being held and then brought to life by other group members. Why this was important for this patient was that, in the group’s view, the goodness of her relationship and choice of partner allowed

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the group to trust that that there was a good and well part of her, which helped them to continue liking her and containing her during difficult times.

The referral and early group experience Susan was referred by her trusted and psychologically minded family doctor, who knew the clinic. This was important, because she was reluctant to be referred and highly sceptical about any kind of psychotherapy, particularly group therapy: and she attended the assessment, and then a first appointment with me, and then the group, only because she trusted her doctor. It is often the case, of course, that a trusted person from outside the group, a family member, partner, doctor, or psychiatrist, is brought into the group by the patient until their sustaining function can be relocated in the group psychotherapist or another group member or the group as a whole. The presenting problem for Susan was a long-standing depression, exacerbated by recent family problems. Her father had recently died. He had been completely incapacitated for some years by dementia and was in hospital for three years. She was surprised by her grief for her father. She told the group she had lost him, and mourned him, some years before, when he demented, and she could not understand the strength of her reaction to his death. She also had extremely complex ambivalent feelings about her father, whom she had liked but felt very distant from while growing up. This immediately appeared in the individual transference to me: she quite liked me at times but always found me difficult and hard to trust, and she had to keep me at a distance. The second, more recent family problem, which was too painful for her to talk about at first in the group, involved her and her husband’s attempts to adopt a child. What happened was that a child had been placed with them with a view to adoption, but after a couple of months the natural parent withdrew permission to proceed and the baby was taken away from them. A little girl was then placed with them and stayed. She and her

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husband were delighted, and over time the group heard about the early years of the adoption, which went well. She knew, however, that she had been unable to express her anger and despair about the lost baby as she had to concentrate on the new child, and this haunted her for the first couple of years in the group. Her mother was a strong-minded, difficult, but vulnerable woman, rather distant and controlling. Susan felt that her mother had always kept her very separate from the father and had come between them. This also began to appear in the transference to me as she became settled in the group. She felt—and was able to say, after some time—that I spoilt the group for her and stood between her and the group, stopping the closeness that she wanted by my behaviour and attitude and, above all, by my insistence on saying things and making interpretations. This is not an unusual dynamic in group analysis: certain patients will often love the group but hate the analysis. In another long-term group, with very different patients—rather concrete psychosomatic people—the group continually complained that I spoiled the group for them by always insisting on saying what I thought. With a weary, contemptuous shrug, one of them would say: “Why ever did you say that? It was going well until you spoke.” Bion vividly described the consequences of this kind of dynamic for the group analyst in his account of his group. He made an interpretation but then felt that he: “. . . had committed some kind of gaffe. . . . In me a conviction began to harden that I had been guilty of blasphemy in a group of true believers” (Bion, 1961, p. 148). This dynamic is, of course, also linked to Britton’s influential formulation of “triangular space”, and his patient’s hatred of his analytic thinking (Britton, 1989, pp. 84–85). For Susan, this process was extremely important, as we all gradually realized that, for her, I stood between her and the group as a whole, just as her mother had stood between her and her father. This slow realization helped the group to move into a new phase of work, and Susan began to edge towards greater understanding.

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The attack on three-person relating in the group This understanding of a fundamental link between internal and external dynamics raises a number of important matters. First, it shows the centrality, and the difficulty, of the move from two-object to three-object relating in both individual and group development in group analysis. For Susan, the first thought, like the concrete patients in the other group, was to get rid of me, to stop me thinking and talking, to wipe out the third and retain only the pair: her and the group as a whole. Susan herself did this in three ways. Most obviously, at difficult times, in the early years of the group, when she was very distressed, particularly at me, she would pull her coat over her head and hide herself completely for 15–20 minutes. What was interesting about this was that the group took it completely in their stride and just carried on. Perhaps they trusted her to listen from under her coat, which she did, so that she could join back in the conversation when she came out from under the coat. I used to feel a vague sense of guilt, of having offended her or missed something, but I consoled myself by thinking that it would have been worse if she had rushed out of the room, which is a much more common manoeuvre by upset group members. I did not see at that point that she was holding on to the couple—her and the group—by shutting me, the unwanted third, out with her coat. A more complex defensive dynamic centred around deafness. Susan took up an evening course in communication with the deaf, learning sign language. She did not work in the field of hearing problems and she had no friends or family members who were deaf, but in a rather vague way she thought that it was a good thing. Having had a few other patients who took up classes in signing for the deaf while in psychotherapy, I assumed that at that point in psychotherapy for them, in the transference, talking to me was like talking to the deaf and called for stronger measures, like sign language. I suggested this to Susan, but she laughed, along with the group, and dismissed it. The group thought that learning sign language was a good, helpful thing

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for her to do, and that I was mistaken. Again, like Bion, I felt mildly guilty of “blasphemy”. Later she talked about dreaming in sign language and told a story of how she had woken her husband up in the middle of the night hitting him in the back by doing sign language vigorously in her sleep. This expressed, at that time, the frustration and anger with me in the transference, at how difficult it was to communicate and to understand. Third, and related to this, was anxiety about gender and sexuality. In one session the women in the group were talking angrily about how difficult and useless men can be, while the men in the group stayed quiet. At one point Susan said defiantly that men were only “boys with money”, and the other women agreed. When I reminded them that I was a man and asked them to say some more, Susan, with a fierce and angry look, pointed at me and then at the door of the group room and said, loudly: “You can leave that at the door!” It is not unusual, of course, for women patients to deny the gender of a male psychotherapist: it disempowers and distances the psychotherapist and is, in the anxiety about the two-object/threeobject relating, another way for the group member to wipe out the group analyst, the unwanted third, and retain the pair of individual and group. Understandably, this is more likely to happen with women patients who have been sexually or physically abused by men: the anxiety for these patients about closeness in a couple to a male psychotherapist is painful. One patient in another group, who had spent her childhood living in one room with parents who frequently had violent sex in front of her at the insistence of the father, was understandably very troubled by me at times. She was also devoutly religious and talked in the group about how distressed she was, when praying in front of the Crucifix, about the thought of Jesus having genitals, and therefore had to hallucinate them away. She added that she had to do the same when she looked at me in the group. Another patient, who had been a nun, had been in a very difficult relationship after leaving her convent and subsequently avoided relationships with men. If a man got close to

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her, she “cut it off”, she said, with a vigorous gesture, chopping the side of her hand down on her palm.

“The monster made entirely of triangles” This problem raised the other difficult matter for Susan at the point of referral, although for the first year we did not hear much about it in the group. What had happened was that she had referred herself to a counsellor when she first became depressed. This counsellor had seen Susan for some months, and Susan liked her and felt that the counsellor was trying to be helpful. Susan began to talk to her about her mother coming between her and her father. The counsellor then began to formulate a theory that Susan had been severely sexually abused by her father in her childhood, that she had denied this and that her mother was trying to protect her. Susan, as she told us later in the group, had doubts about this from the start: she had no memories of anything like it, and it seemed so unlikely. She could not confront her father, as he was demented and was now dead, and she could not face upsetting her mother, but gradually she began to believe, against her better judgement, that the counsellor, who continued to energetically press her case, might be right. She brought this painful dilemma to the group and spoke of it at length over some months. The group were interested, supportive, and kind but non-committal about the issue. During this period, as the relationships in the group began to deepen, we became interested in the issue of the triangular relationship between Susan, me, and the group as a whole, and we talked about the complexity of triangular relationships, both in personal life and in the group. Sibling relationships, for example, continually appear in group analysis, often most obviously in the form of the hated and envied younger brother or sister, along with the assumption that the group analyst, or the group as a whole, or all the men or all the women, or all the older or younger people in the group, love that younger sibling more. This sibling always appears in the form of the new, unwanted baby, each time that a new patient starts in the group. It

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is important to emphasize that this is always a three-object relation. The new patient/baby is hated for him or herself and because he or she is loved better by a third—often at first the group analyst, but also others in the group. As the group talked about these things over a few weeks, Susan recalled that as a child she had suffered from a frightening repeated nightmare in which she was pursued down the street where she lived, which she recognized in the dream, by a “monster that was made entirely of triangles”. Over the following year, the group continued to affirm and work in the developing group “triangular space”, seeing themselves and one another increasingly in relation to three objects. This understanding of intra-group relating is robust and therefore flexible, and on a moment by moment basis the group could experience itself in a variety of triangles, that were most commonly based in the family: self/parent/sibling; self/parent/parent; self/ parent/grandparent; self/child/parent; self/child/partner; self/ parent/partner. All of these, and other variations, once recognized, can be experienced and then re-experienced in the course of the group session with the members of the group momentarily or for long periods of time, standing in for the other parts of the triangular relationship. All this happens at the “transference level” in Foulkes’s term. At the “projective level”, the triangular roles become more fluid and complex, the group as a whole standing in for one person or one idea, for example, or the group members representing parts of the self, persecutory fantasies, desires and wishes, and parts of the mother’s body or mind. This process is rich and hard to follow as, once the group is fully underway, the sets of triangular relationships obviously overlap and happen simultaneously in different time-scales, some instantaneous and momentary, others lasting for many sessions while something is being resolved. It is important to make clear that these three object roles are not voluntarily assumed, and that there is a continuous interplay of identification, introjection, and projective identification. Presumably each patient has a group in their mind, arising out of their experience, which

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consists of a constellation of internal objects and, most importantly, the relations between those internal objects. This internal group is then projected into every group that the patient encounters. This group consists of painful three-object relations (“my mother loved my sister and did not love me”) that are denied and replaced by a fantasy solution of a perfect twoobject relation (“I can find another mother just for myself”). At the same time, painful two-object relations (“I hate my father”) can be denied and replaced by fantasy three-object solutions (“my sisters and I can live better without any parents”). This resulting “compulsion to repeat the group” then starts to appear, quite quickly, in the therapy group, and the patient attempts to force the group to embody the internal group. The group will usually, after some hesitation, not go along with this, and then gradually, over time, if this process moves along, the patient takes back inside the newly modified internal group, along with the accompanying acceptance of both two- and three-object relating. This may be how change happens over time as the group separately and collectively take in, metabolize, transform, and then lose these projected roles and relationships. It is important to note that this process is by no means always explicit and obvious, as identification and introjection can be silent. The relationships in the group can be powerful engines of change without being spoken of. This is presumably why, as most group psychotherapists will know, some patients can make substantial changes in group analysis without ever saying very much and apparently without conscious and explicit understanding.

Understanding and resolution: a new triangle When Susan had been in the group for about three years, a new patient started. She was Mary, a woman in her late sixties, battered by life and with a severe long-term depression. She was very apprehensive about joining the group, but at her first session Susan, who was by now an important and influential member of the group, was very welcoming to her and, in subsequent sessions, encouraged Mary to talk. After a few weeks Mary did begin to talk in the group, in a halting and painful way, about her childhood, and she revealed that she had been, as a child, repeatedly sexually abused by her father. This was

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the first time that she had ever told anyone, and the group were very moved and concerned. Over the following sessions this was worked with, sensitively and supportively, by the group. One session Susan arrived in a very emotional and troubled state of mind. She had been thinking and dreaming about Mary and about what the counsellor had told her had happened to her, and trying to put it together. After a painful week she suddenly realized, she said, what had almost certainly happened. It was her mother who had been sexually abused as a child, not she, and that was why her mother had always stood between Susan and her father. This made sense from what she knew about her grandfather and her mother’s hesitant accounts of her family life. Susan was generous and grateful to Mary, who was the same age as her mother, for the help that she had received from Mary’s account of her abuse. Susan stayed in the group for almost another year and worked towards a good ending. For most of that time she was also a good and helpful therapist to the rest of the group.

Summary I have tried to indicate, using case examples from long-term group analysis, the central importance of the development, over time, of three-object relating, or group triangular space, in the growth and development of an analytic group. In the first example, the group could not become a group until it learned to move into triangular space. In the second example, the patient learned and changed by understanding, first, the connection between her three-object relationship with me and the group and the difficulty with her mother and father, and, second, building on this, by connecting her contact with Mary and her account of her abusive father with her relationship with her mother and grandfather. Her unconscious knowledge of this was represented by her childhood dream of the “monster made entirely of triangles”. This sort of development is, in my view, the central dynamic for the process whereby the group becomes a working analytic force,

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or becomes itself as a group. The “monster made entirely of triangles” of Susan’s dream is, in fact, the group; once this is worked out, then the group-as-a-whole and the individual group members are able to move easily and quickly from one state of relating to another, from two-person couple relationships to three-person family relationships, moment by moment, back and forth in the course of a group session and over the course of time. It is the vehicle for the establishment of a dynamic interpersonal field in the group, which then enables transformation of the group compulsion to repeat. Above all, it gives group analysts, working in the middle of a booming, buzzing analytic group, a basic structure with which to survey, understand, and analyse the often apparently incomprehensible events and relationships going on around them and the internal confusion and bafflement that is so often the greatest part of the group psychotherapist’s countertransference to the group.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Oscillating images: perceptions of couples in organizations William Halton & Jenny Sprince

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ince Freud’s discovery of the Oedipus complex, the couple has been at the heart of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The couple has been studied in a variety of treatment settings, including individual couples and groups of couples, in­patient couples and outpatient couples, and a wide body of literature has built up, extending over several decades. Much of this work, from Freud to the present day, has been reviewed in The Forgotten Parent: The Father’s Contribution to the Infant’s Development during the Pre-Oedipal Years by Dorothea K. Stone (2008). In the field of psychodynamic organizational consultancy, couples as owners of family businesses have also been continuously researched and documented since the 1940s. This chapter makes a contribution to the study of couples working together as ordinary employees in a variety of organizations. The chapter explores some primitive perceptions of the couple, as observed by Klein in her pioneering work with children, and draws from her writings a typology of four specific images of the couple. It describes how Bion applied Klein’s observations to his thinking about groups and their anxieties about disintegration. Following a brief overview of other research findings, the chapter applies these, together with the understanding derived from 145

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Klein and Bion, to organizations. It provides a series of illustrations drawn from consultancy practice where couples have worked together as employees. Through these illustrations, it demonstrates how the perceptions of the couple within the organization can oscillate, and how these oscillations can trigger a tendency towards disruption or disintegration.

Early awareness of the parental couple Freud established the developmental centrality of the Oedipus complex, which reaches its apex around the third to fifth year of childhood. Klein, treating younger children, found earlier indications of the Oedipus complex. “We can observe that children often show, as early as the beginning of their second year, a marked preference for the parent of the opposite sex and other indications of incipient Oedipus tendencies” (Klein, 1926, p. 129). As her clinical experience increased, she found that awareness of the parents as a couple began as weaning took place and the infant became aware that the mother’s absence implied that she was with father. This awareness of the parents as a couple could happen at 6–12 months (Klein, 1932, p. 7) and even as early as at 3–6 months (Klein, 1958, p. 239). What the children imagined the parents did together could be observed in their play and drawings about their families and was based on their own earliest experiences of being fed, changed, and held by mother. Some of her child patients had seen or heard their parents’ intercourse, but for other children knowledge of it was based on their phylogenetic inheritance. “We know from Freud that there is some unconscious knowledge which the child obtains, apparently in a phylogenetic way. To this belongs the knowledge about parental intercourse, birth of children etc.; but it is of a rather vague and confused nature” (Klein, 1927, p. 175). In the course of development one image of the parental couple is superseded by another, but the earlier images remain latent in the mind and can be re-animated in a process of oscillation that is illustrated in the later organizational examples. It is possible to identify four distinct images of the parental couple in Klein’s work, as listed and described below.

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Typology of the parental couple in Klein’s work The fused persecutory couple In games the children played in the therapy room, the absent couple were frequently depicted as cooking, eating, and exchanging faeces (Klein, 1927, p. 175). One child played that she was given semolina that made her sick while the parents enjoyed marvellous food made of whipped cream and special milk. “This special food, which was eaten by father and mother alone, was used . . . to represent the exchange of substances during coition” (Klein, 1932, p. 40). From many such games Klein concluded that the first and most primitive image of the parents as a couple was that of a couple fused in continuous sexual intercourse. Of one child, she wrote that the child’s phantasy was that “in coition her mother incorporated her father’s penis and semen and her father incorporated mother’s breasts and milk”, and this “formed the basis of her hatred and envy against her two parents” (Klein, 1932, p. 40). The phantasy of the fused couple gave rise to a fear that it would come to punish or kill the child in retaliation for its murderous feelings. The fear of the paternal penis incorporated by the mother is so overwhelming, because . . . the penis represents the father in person. Thus the penis inside the mother represents a combination of father and mother in one person, this combination being regarded as a particularly terrifying and threatening one. [Klein, 1932, p. 132]

The image of the fused persecutory couple was so far removed from reality and so distorted by phantasy that Klein referred to it as having a “psychotic character” (Klein, 1932, p. 155). The infant’s earliest awareness of being in a family group was that of being an excluded singleton in a threesome, threatened by a fused persecutory couple.

The warring couple A second image of the parental couple arises when the child projects its aggression into the couple in such a way that in the child’s imagination they are locked together in painful warfare. Klein also

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saw scenes in the children’s play in which the parents tormented and killed each other and in which father beat mother and dismembered her (Klein, 1927, p. 176). “The child also has phantasies in which his parents destroy each other by means of their genitals and excrements which are felt to be dangerous weapons” (Klein, 1932, p. 132). The anxiety arising from these hostile phantasies is that the warring couple may also turn on the child to seek retribution. Although there are indeed couples who do, in reality, abuse and murder their children or who are locked in painful conflict and may murder or dismember their partners, Klein was concerned with the many cases she observed in which the phantasies of the fused persecutory couple and the warring couple were generated exclusively by the children’s own envy and jealousy as they tried to process the shock of weaning, the loss of their own fusion with the mother, and a dawning awareness of the parents as a sexual couple (Klein, 1932, p. 65). The murderous phantasies triggered by feelings of deprivation and exclusion gave rise to anxiety and fear of retaliation.

The differentiated couple Gradually, images of a fused persecutory couple and of a warring couple give way to a third image of the parents as two differentiated individuals in a couple relationship. If side by side with the imago of the combined parents, imagos of the single father and mother, especially the “good” mother, are sufficiently strongly operative, the boy’s growing relationship to objects and adaptation to reality will have the result that his phantasies about his father’s penis inside his mother will lose their power, . . . and he will now enter upon a phase in which his Oedipus trends and his fear of being castrated by his real father come into prominence. [Klein, 1932, p. 246]

The perception of the parents as two separate people gives the child some hope of making one into an ally against the other, who becomes the dangerous excluded singleton. This mechanism of splitting the couple creates an idealized parent and a denigrated one, and which is which can oscillate “in rapid succession” (Klein, 1928, p. 189). This stage of development is the classical Oedi-

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pus complex, and the symbolic oedipal dynamic of manipulating differences between authority figures in organizations has been widely observed. However, the organizational illustrations in this chapter do not refer to this dynamic, in which one member of a couple is played off against the other.

The benign couple The perception of the benign couple develops as the Oedipus complex is resolved and the parental couple are perceived as united by love in a union that has no malign intent towards the children. The infant’s capacity to enjoy at the same time the relation to both parents . . . depends on his feeling that they are separate individuals. This more integrated relation to the parents . . . implies a greater understanding of their relation to one another and is a precondition for the infant’s hope that he can bring them together and unite them in a happy way. [Klein, 1952, p. 79 note 2; emphasis in original]

Although suspicions based on the earlier images of the parental couple are still present in the background, a family in which trust and love predominate provides a basis for friendly co-operative relationships in adult life: No child’s mind is free from fears and suspicions, but if the relation to our parents is built predominantly upon trust and love, we can establish them firmly in our minds as guiding and helpful figures, which are a source of comfort and harmony and the prototype for all friendly relationships in later life. [Klein, 1937, p. 339]

Although Klein never explicitly thematized images of the parental couple, we can bring together scattered references to construct a typology of four main images: the fused persecutory couple and the warring couple; the differentiated couple and the benign couple. The first two images come from what she later characterized as the paranoid-schizoid position. Her work on the Oedipus complex showed that its resolution involved a move away from the paranoid-schizoid position into the depressive position (Klein, 1945). Although the benign couple is clearly a depressive position

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image, it may be subject to idealization. The organizational illustrations in this chapter focus on the oscillations between the first two images—the fused persecutory couple and the warring couple— and the fourth image, the benign couple, as described by Klein. Bion used Klein’s concept of the fused persecutory couple to understand the anxiety of disintegration in small groups and the change from one basic assumption to another.

Bion’s application of Klein’s thinking to small groups Wilfred Bion, in his work with small groups in the late 1940s, discovered that groups tended to create emotional cohesion against the fear of disintegration through three different configurations of leadership and followership—or, as he called them, basic assumptions: dependency, fight/flight, and pairing (Bion, 1961, pp. 146– 153). In reviewing this work, Bion felt that he had not explained sufficiently why these configurations exist, nor why they change from one to another. He thought that they must be “capable of resolution into something more fundamental” (Bion, 1961, p. 160). Bion suggested that the underlying anxiety about “the feared disintegration of the group” (Bion, 1961, p. 63) was linked to an unconscious memory of the fear of annihilation by the parental couple that was reawakened through participation in a group. To explain his reasoning, he first identified an unconscious equation between the group and the mother’s body, the place where parental intercourse occurs: My impression is that the group approximates too closely, in the minds of the individuals composing it, to the primitive phantasies about the contents of the mother’s body. [Bion, 1961, p. 162]

Then, referring to the parental intercourse itself, he says: I must stress the point that I consider it essential to work out very thoroughly the primitive primal scene as it discloses itself in the group. This differs markedly from the primal scene in its classical description in that it is much more bizarre and seems to assume that a part of one parent, the breast or the mother’s

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body, contains among other objects a part of the father. In her paper on the early stages of the Oedipus conflict, Melanie Klein (1928; also 1945) gives a description of these phantasies as she discovered them in the process of individual analysis. [Bion, 1961, p. 164]

Bion thought that the phantasy of the parents fused in sexual intercourse, described in the typology above as the fused persecutory couple, represents the “deep psychotic levels” of the group (Bion, 1961, p. 165). “The basic assumptions now emerge as formations secondary to an extremely early primal scene . . .” (p. 164). The basic assumptions have the defensive function of keeping the phantasy of the fused persecutory couple at bay. They change from one to another as each one, in turn, fails in its defensive function because, paradoxically, it serves to remind the group of the anxiety being defended against—in the same way as the presence of a burglar alarm activates anxiety about being burgled. In a pairing group, for example, the emergence of a couple is encouraged by the group in the hope that it will act as a benign couple. But “it is only a matter of time” (p. 163) before the very presence of the couple gradually reminds the group of the fused persecutory couple it is trying to escape. And a fight/flight group with a singleton leader is also a reminder that in the end the real enemy that threatens the group with disintegration is the fused persecutory couple (pp. 163–164). We can surmise that a dependency group with its singleton leader is a retreat to a fusion with the all-providing mother, which again reminds the group of what it is trying to avoid. Bion suggests that the “unexplained impulse” that propels groups to displace one basic assumption with another is the psychotic anxiety that is “sooner or later” released by each basic assumption, in turn (pp. 188–189). It has been suggested that in giving the basic assumptions a psychologically defensive function, Bion is contradicting his earlier view that they originate in a proto-mental system that is prior to the emergence of psychological states (p. 102) and that they are, in fact, biogenetic instinctive reactions (Miller, 1998, pp. 41–43). However, there seems to be no reason why they could not be both biologically grounded and also, at the psycho-social group level, be used as a defence against ­anxiety (cf. Torres, 2010a, p. 63). Bion’s application of Klein’s concept of the fused persecutory couple as the source of a group’s anxiety about disintegration

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­ rovides a stepping stone from individual dynamics through group p dynamics to organizational dynamics. The hypothesis would be that a couple working together as employees in the same organization would stimulate an unconscious anxiety of a fused persecutory couple or a warring couple that would be a source of disruption or organizational disintegration.

Research on couples in organizations A limited literature review reveals what seems to be a research gap in relation to couples working together in the same organization. Rosabeth M. Kanter, in Work and Family in the United States: A Critical Review and Agenda for Research and Policy (1977), reviewed the research literature on work and the family for the period between 1958 and 1977, but she doesn’t mention any paper focused on couples working together. She states that “ . . . when family members are employed in the same organisation would be a valuable research project” (Kanter, 1977, p. 92). She found that most academic studies treated work identities and home identities as completely disconnected. She called this the “myth of separate worlds” (Kanter, 1977, p. 8). A recent paper by Lakshmi Ramarajan and Erin M. Reid, “Shattering the Myth of Separate Worlds: Negotiating Non-work Identities at Work” (2013), reviewed the research literature from 1990 to 2012 and seemed to find no research on couples working together in the same organization. Phyllis Moen and Stephen Sweet, in “Two Careers, One Employer: Couples Working for the Same Corporation” (2002), focus on married or cohabiting couples working for the same employer. But they are primarily looking at the outcomes for the couple in terms of the dynamics between work and nonwork identities, and so the organizational issues arising at work from working together in the same organization are not the main focus. On the other hand, the subject of couples working together in the same organization is one that raises considerable interest and emotion. Some industries traditionally employ not only couples but also extended families, as do family businesses, with varying

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degrees of success. Some organizations happily employ married couples; others do so, but with restrictions on working together if it compromises their objectivity in relation to clients. There is a general feeling that at work, couples working together should minimize the visibility of their coupledom. They should deliberately take steps to keep their couple relationship out of their work identity, to keep both their mutual attachment and their conflicts out of the workplace, and to avoid being perceived as a “fused” couple. Kanter puts her finger on the antagonism organizations may feel towards married couples: Furthermore, within larger systems the family can easily form a natural coalition. Family members might band together as a political force, might favour one another in decisions on grounds far removed from the organisation’s purposes or interests, and might exclude fellow worker-members from organisationallyrelevant deliberations . . . Indeed, Weber (1947, pp. 354–358) felt that strong family influences could undermine the development of rational bureaucracies based on individual merit (Rapoport, 1975). [Kanter, 1977, p. 9]

The phrases “a natural coalition” and banding together as a “political force” contain the hidden image of the Klein–Bion “fused persecutory couple” that conspires to undermine the cohesion of the organization. The latent suspicion that an organization may feel towards couples puts pressure on couples to operate as separate individuals. Alternatively, if their coupledom is part of their work identity, they may feel an organizational pressure to show themselves to be an especially good problem-free couple, in accordance with some idealized image of how a couple should be—and, above all, neither a fused persecutory couple nor a warring couple.

Oscillating images of couples in organizations The following organizational illustrations have their origin in consultancy practice over many years. The original circumstances have been fictionalized beyond recognition, to protect the identity of the organization and the individuals concerned. Only the oscillation

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of images and their impact remains as one isolated strand, taken out of a complex group and organizational setting and transferred to a different imaginary organization. The examples are, therefore, illustrative rather than evidential, and any correspondence with real individuals, groups, or organizations is entirely coincidental. In the following six illustrations the first three show oscillations to and from the perception of a warring couple, and the second three show oscillations to and from a fused persecutory couple.

Illustration 1:  benign couple to warring couple to benign couple Tim and Karen were a married couple who had been working together for some years in a boys’ residential home that had its own school. Tim was white and a leader of a care team; Karen was black and a member of the kitchen staff. Their presence had always been helpful in alleviating any outbreaks of racism among adults or children. Staff would regularly refer to their relationship as proof that there was no racism within the organization. However, when Tim was promoted to deputy home manager, with responsibility for kitchen staff, there was an outbreak of racist behaviour among the boys: their behaviour towards the black female staff became increasingly sexualized and disparaging, and two black children became targets of racist abuse. Staff complained that the organization had always been both racist and sexist. They cited Tim’s promotion as evidence that women, in particular black women, were despised by the organization. When Karen was asked to change her role and to become a class-room assistant reporting to the head of school, the boys’ attitude changed dramatically, and the staff returned to their previous belief in a non-racist organization. In this illustration the organization used Tim and Karen’s coupledom as part of their work identity to confirm its non-racist culture. The promotion of one partner and the introduction of a hierarchical management line into their relationship was seen as setting Tim and Karen against each other, transforming them into a warring

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couple. The effect of this was to cause disintegration of the harmony of the organization. When Karen was moved to a different department with a different reporting line, the necessary equality between the couple was re-established. There was a clear organizational need for them to be perceived as an idealized benign couple representing equality and mutual respect as organizational values.

Illustration 2:  benign couple to warring couple When a large corporation bought a small organic farm that had been run as a family business, Head Office appointed Donald and Lucy, a married couple, to take charge of it. Donald was responsible mainly for the financial side, while Lucy managed the staff. Lucy hoped that a healthier lifestyle and financial responsibilities would help Donald overcome his gambling problem. As well as marketing their produce, the farm offered accommodation for paying guests and provided courses for students and young people from local schools and colleges. There was a friendly family atmosphere, and Lucy and Donald were perceived as a benign couple. However, after a few months Lucy discovered that Donald was misappropriating funds for gambling purposes. Their acrimonious arguments were overheard by staff and students. A new financial controller was brought in, and Donald was demoted to a lower-level role of looking after visitors and paying guests. With more limited access to money and a less stressful role, Donald was able to reduce his gambling, and the marital relationship recovered. The staff, however, were shocked at the sudden change in their perception of the couple. They were unaware of the full extent of Donald’s misdemeanours and felt that he had been humiliated by Lucy. The local reputation of the farm suffered, and student and guest numbers began to fall. Staff began to allege that Lucy was a bully, who was criticising them unfairly. Some staff began looking for other jobs. An inquiry found that there was no basis for the allegations of bullying.

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In this illustration Donald and Lucy were first perceived as a benign couple. When their arguments were overheard, the staff felt that their previous perception of them had been based on an idealization, and they now saw them as a warring couple, in which one partner had been defeated by the other. As business declined, the staff feared that the winning partner was turning on them, and the team began to disintegrate.

Illustration 3:  benign couple to warring couple Helen and Nick were a married couple working within the same Higher Education College. Helen ran courses within the Social Care Department, while Nick ran courses in Media Studies. They had great success in attracting students to an interdepartmental programme that they organized together. Nick’s students were able to make videos within care settings where Helen’s students undertook placements. Helen’s students were able to explore media representations of social care issues. The couple often held study weekends for students in their own home and regularly invited them in small groups for tea parties. Students consistently gave positive feedback about the joint programme, and it was regularly over-subscribed. Helen and Nick were seen by students as a benign couple. One year the college was surprised to find that the programme was not fully enrolled. When students were asked why they were not signing on for next year’s programme, they said that they had been put off by rumours coming from the previous cohort of students. Some of them had overheard Helen and Nick arguing about a domestic matter. They had assumed that it indicated the imminent break-up of the marriage and the discontinuance of the joint programme. Helen and Nick were astonished to hear about this: their argument had been a trivial one and was not indicative of any problem in their relationship. The closure of the joint programme was narrowly avoided. Their image as a benign couple had oscillated to that of a warring couple. The students felt that their previous perception of them as a benign couple had been an idealization of what was, in fact, a warring couple that was not safe to be with.

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These three illustrations show that in an organizational setting the perception of a couple working together is unstable and highly volatile. It may have little connection with a couple’s sense of their own reality. A downward oscillation to a more primitive unconscious image is easily triggered by a management decision or by what would, in a different context, be considered as ordinary couple behaviour. It can be triggered, for instance, when a couple have a minor argument. The triggering of this more primitive image also activates the latent suspicions, anxieties and fears associated with it; and this, in turn, leads those involved to behave in ways that tend towards organizational disruption or disintegration. The second set of illustrations shows the effects of oscillation to the image of a fused persecutory couple. .

Illustration 4:  benign couple to fused persecutory couple A married couple, George and Mary, managed a hotel in a chain of hotels that specialized in offering wedding packages. Staff morale was high, and staff were proactive in suggesting original ideas for wedding parties—music, decorations, and food that all followed a particular theme. The business had flourished, and the foyer displayed photographs of happy couples and grateful letters from past brides, grooms, and their parents. George and Mary were perceived as a benign couple who promoted independent initiatives in their staff. However, problems started to emerge when several staff resigned unexpectedly, and bookings began to fall. Staff described a change in atmosphere from friendliness to a cold remoteness verging on hostility. Mary refused to discuss a problem with the chef about a new menu George had created. George refused to discuss a request for special leave on health grounds unless Mary was also present. Staff members felt that helping couples to organize their weddings used to be fun, but now it was a grind. Their contributions were no longer wanted. It did not feel safe to make suggestions. Discussions with George and Mary revealed that having their marriage on show all the time was creating difficulties in their relationship. They felt under constant pressure to present

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t­ hemselves to staff and newly-weds as an idealizable couple. At their request, the organization was arranging to move Mary to manage a different hotel in a nearby location. In the meantime the couple had agreed to avoid any differences or disagreements in public, as they wished to dispel any possible suspicions about their marital problems. Trying to present a united front had undermined the individuality and spontaneity of their separate relationships with the staff. Once Mary had left and had been replaced by a newly appointed co-manager, the atmosphere improved, and the business recovered. In this illustration the couple found the inclusion of their coupledom in their work identity had resulted in constant observation and the expectation of presenting an idealized image of a happy couple, and this had become too stressful. The organization had agreed to a change of role. But their decision to show a rigidly united front had unintentionally triggered a perception of them as a fused persecutory couple, which resulted in unexpected resignations—“the feared disintegration of the group”, as Bion had postulated.

Illustration 5:  fused persecutory couple to benign couple to fused persecutory couple Peter was the manager of a small retail grocery store, part of a chain. He was popular with his staff and had created a good customer base in a part of town where the chain had not previously operated. Business was expanding. To help Peter with his increased workload, Head Office appointed a new deputy manager, Vicky. Within a few months, the staff became anxious about changes in Peter’s manner. He was less available to staff and customers. He spent more time in his office with Vicky in conversations that stopped if anyone entered the room. One member of staff had heard that a competitor wanted to buy the chain and thought that Peter and Vicky were planning for redundancies. Another thought that they were planning to introduce self-service tills in order to reduce staffing levels. The staff responded to these anxieties in various ways: time-keeping

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deteriorated, the shelves were not stocked, there was some petty pilfering, and there was less enthusiasm for original ideas for window displays. Staff were experiencing Peter and Vicky as a fused persecutory couple. Then one day a member of staff reported seeing them together in the cinema, so involved in each other that they didn’t notice him. The staff group immediately abandoned their anxieties. When Peter and Vicky announced their engagement, the staff held a surprise party in the store. Head Office contributed a case of sparkling wine and sent a photographer from the company newsletter. Peter and Vicky were encouraged to mount a display to inform customers of their engagement and to use it as an opportunity for marketing products that had romantic associations: chocolates, heart-shaped biscuits, champagne. The perception had oscillated from that of a fused persecutory couple to that of a benign couple who could be presented to customers for idealization. A few months later Head Office had concerns about a manager in another store who had started a relationship with one of the female suppliers. A consignment of food that her company supplied was suspected of being contaminated. On further inspection, this turned out to have been a false allegation. However, this incident aroused Head Office suspicions that couples might conspire to undermine appropriate standards. Peter and Vicky were now seen as a threat to the organization. Senior managers insisted that one of them take an equivalent position in a different store within the chain, rather than continuing to work together. This illustration shows that Peter and Vicky’s withdrawal into their romantic attachment prompted the staff to develop a perception of them as a fused persecutory couple. When they became engaged, the perception changed to that of a benign couple, and Head Office put pressure on them to include their coupledom in their work identity as an idealizable relationship. However, fears and suspicion of couples persist in organizations in a latent form, as described above (Klein, 1937; Kanter, 1977). This latent suspicion was triggered by a false allegation against a different couple in

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another store, and Head Office now perceived Peter and Vicky as a fused persecutory couple and split them up.

Illustration 6:  benign couple to fused persecutory couple to benign couple Henry, an experienced head teacher, ran a residential school for vulnerable adolescents together with his wife Catherine, a psychotherapist, employed with the agreement of senior management to supervise a small team of counsellors. The adolescents lived in a series of cottages in the school grounds. Henry led the school, and the residential staff were managed by a senior residential social worker. Staff members seemed determined to “look on the bright side” and refused to acknowledge the extent of disturbance among the children, or the impact of the work on themselves. It also seemed hard for them to express any differences of opinion. Lists of rules and values were displayed on the wall in every room, and the children were kept to a highly disciplined regime. Despite this, there were frequent outbreaks of violence, but little attempt was made to think about them. Henry was particularly concerned to help staff to become more differentiated in their thinking and more able to acknowledge negative feelings. Henry and Catherine decided to provide separate discussion groups for each discipline, teachers and social workers, which they led as a couple. Gradually teachers and social workers began to form pairs among themselves, joining each other’s work situations. At this time, Henry and Catherine were seen as a benign couple helping the staff become both more differentiated and more collaborative in their work with the adolescents. However, as a married couple, Henry and Catherine took their holiday at the same time—usually in the early summer, so as to be on duty in August when the other staff took their holidays. On this occasion, while they were absent, an allegation of sexual harassment was made by a female member of staff against one of the male members. Henry was contacted on holiday, and he asked for the matter to be held over until his return.

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When Henry and Catherine returned, they found the staff group in an angry mood. Three of the teachers had announced that they were looking for other jobs, and one had informed Head Office that this was because of Henry’s tyrannical leadership—an accusation that had never been made before. At the same time, the teachers and care staff asserted that Catherine was domineering and aggressive. Henry was just her puppet, mouthing Catherine’s opinions and unable to think for himself. The staff were in agreement that this was why the teachers had decided to leave. In this illustration, by working as a couple in the discussion groups, Henry and Catherine had brought their coupledom more prominently into their work identity. As a result, their absence on holiday had a greater impact and had stirred up angry and sexual feelings in the staff, in the same way that Klein had described how children experience angry and sexual feelings when they are alone at night and their parents are together. Moreover, the harassment allegation provided an opportunity for interrupting the couple during their private time. Taking their annual leave together triggered an oscillation in the staff perception from a benign couple to a fused persecutory couple, and the staff group began to fragment. After reinstating the discussion groups, Henry and Catherine were able to regain their status as a benign couple. The sexual harassment allegation was resolved, with apologies given and accepted, and the three teachers decided not to look for other employment. These six illustrations show how images of the fused persecutory couple and the warring couple can emerge in organizations. When they do, they threaten to undermine the cohesion of the organization and to start a process of disintegration, as Bion postulated.

Conclusion In the early history of psychoanalysis, the search for the primary source of anxiety resulted in various suggestions, i­ncluding:

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dammed-up libido, birth trauma, maternal separation and “castration” by the same-sex parent. From her work with very young children, Klein added “the earliest anxiety-situation of all”: the fused persecutory couple (Klein, 1929, p. 213). The childhood image of the dangerous fused persecutory couple is ingrained in the psyche, and latent mistrust, fear, and suspicion of the couple is not eradicated even by a happy childhood with benign, loving parents (Klein, 1937, p. 339). In applying Klein’s theory, Bion traced a group’s anxiety about group disintegration to the phantasy of this dangerous fused couple in the minds of the group members. The basic mistrust of the couple also finds a place in academic organizational research (Kanter, 1977, p. 9). Organizations fear that a couple working together may disrupt the work of the organization, either as a warring couple, by bringing marital conflict into the workplace, or as a fused persecutory couple, by uniting to subvert organizational purposes. Couples may try to dispel this organizational mistrust by rendering their coupledom invisible. Organizations may show their ambivalence by alternating idealization and denigration of the couple. This chapter has tried to indicate different ways in which perceptions of the couple by those above and below them in an organization can oscillate. The illustrations presented from consultancy practice show that organizations are in danger of disruption and loss of cohesion when the perception of a couple regresses from that of a benign couple to that of a fused couple or a warring couple. However, there are some areas for further consideration that need to be mentioned. The illustrations have disguised the organizations and its members in order to protect their identity. Disguise of this magnitude inevitably distorts and simplifies the complexity of the data. All the characters and organizations in the illustrations are fictitious. The oscillation of the perceptions and its consequences are as close as possible to the original situation, but the imaginary organizational context cannot be interrogated for further meaning beyond that element. This may give some of the illustrations a mono-causal appearance, as if the shift in the perception of the couple by the organization originates solely from the couple. It may equally be the case that in the original situations there was a mutually interactive process in which prior shifts in the group or

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in the organization were also influencing the couple’s behaviour and the group’s perception of them. From a systems-psychodynamic perspective, the removal of the original organization means that the organization as an “independent variable” with its own particular “internal emotional patterning” is missing (Armstrong, 2005, pp. 93, 103). Some organizations welcome couples; others do not. Organizational culture and systemic factors must play some part in the stability or oscillation of perceptions of couples working together. A research project on the dynamics of couples in organizations would need to retain the organizationally specific context. Moreover, a sample drawn from practitioner experience is inevitably biased towards problematic situations. A second area for consideration is the typology itself. The typology of couples based on their internal dynamics has been developed by psychoanalytic practitioners beyond the four types of couples identified by Klein. The influence on the oscillations that is attributable to the psychodynamic qualities of couples themselves may be more complex than is suggested by the illustrations. A third area for consideration is the societal development of new types of couples beyond the heterosexual couples described by Klein. The heteronormative framework that restricts her observations to heterosexual couples may not be adequate for research into contemporary dynamics that arise in relation to civil partnerships and married or cohabiting same-sex couples. Whether these couples attract the same perceptions as heterosexual couples—persecutory, warring, differentiated, and benign—remains a question. Moreover, the Equality Act 2010 has made marriage and civil partnership a protected characteristic,1 which has increased the complexity for management in dealing with trouble either between couples or between couples and the organization. It is perhaps worth noting that Bion thought that in basic assumption pairing a same-sex couple and an opposite-sex couple could equally symbolize the hope of overcoming despair about group destructiveness: “the sex of the pair was of no particular consequence” (Bion, 1961, p. 150). Leaving aside these methodological considerations, the chapter has illustrated how couples working together for the same

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employer are vulnerable to the darker images of the couple that are latent in every organization and can emerge unexpectedly from the depths. Some organizations have good experiences of employing couples. For others, there is an uneasiness about the relationship between couple dynamics and organization dynamics. There is a degree of convergence between existing academic research and psychodynamic perspectives about the source of this unease. The authors hope that the chapter will stimulate further interest and research.

Note 1.  Equality Act 2010 (c. 15, pt. 2, ch. 1, p. 5), available at: www.legislation .gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf

CHAPTER NINE

Belonging to a body larger than one’s own: the pair in the group, the organization, and society Richard Morgan-Jones

The body is the collective subjective and the only means to convey collective human experience perceived in a commonly understood way. Anthony Gormley, sculptor [quoted in Craiger-Smith, 2010, p. 22]

How is one to penetrate this obstacle, this caesura of birth? Can any method of communication be sufficiently “penetrating” to pass that caesura in the direction from post-natal conscious thought back to the pre-mental in which thoughts and ideas have their counterpart in “times” and “levels” of mind where they are not thoughts or ideas? [Bion, 1977, p. 45]

The fundamental anxieties that underlie the basic assumption group resistances were originally thought of as “protomental” phenomena. . . . These would be the forerunners of Bion’s later concept of β-elements and O. [Grotstein, 2007, p. 192]

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Engaging with theory: searching for a perspective for enquiry This chapter seeks to trace the oscillation between the dynamics of love and hatred towards the couple in relation to wider social groups. These dynamics have three dimensions: 1. The social group’s love and hate of the couple. 2. Love and hate of an internalized and shared combined parental object. 3. Love and hate between the couple, both as a pair fearful of intimacy as well as from their attitudes internalized from the social group. These dimensions can be framed within research into the relatedness between what is bodily, what is emotional, and what is social—the trilogy of perspectives within which Bion conceived protomentality. His concept is the bedrock for sensation becoming inner emotional turbulence that seeks expression within a group (Bion, 1961, 1962a; Morgan-Jones, 2010a, 2011). In setting the scene for this chapter, I contrast two apparently differing approaches to exploring the psychodynamics of experiences between the couple and the group. Wilfred Bion, before his training as a psychoanalyst, had developed a psychoanalytic approach to the work he had been engaging with as a First World war tank commander, an army psychiatrist, an officer selector, director of a therapeutic community, a doctor with an interest in surgery, a group analyst, and an educated and thoughtful citizen with his own historical context. He had been influenced by many writers, and although he did not reference them extensively, his sources have begun to be more transparent, and his thinking has been extensively developed in clinical, social, organizational, and aesthetic fields (Armstrong, 2005; Bleandonu, 1994; Civitarese, 2013; Grinberg, Sor, & Tabak de Bianchedi, 1977; Grotstein, 2007; Lipgar & Pines, 2003; Pistiner de Cortinas, 2009; Torres, 2013). The key source for Bion’s ideas on groups was his surgery mentor Wilfred Trotter, whose book, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War

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(Trotter, 1916), heralded his thinking about how groups seem to cluster around three types of shared unconscious assumptions—as he came to describe them under the influence of his analyst, Melanie Klein. One of these was that at times groups seem to share the phantasy that, in order to survive, they need to find within the group a couple who will—they imagine—fruitfully produce a new era, a new leader, a new text, a new child that would knit the group into the future. In short, the group has need of a couple producing offspring to preserve its immortality. Fundamentally, this group dynamic embodies the emotions of hope and expectation. Bion later characterized vicarious interest in and between the couple as belonging to the epistemophilic instinct (Klein, 1930) and to exploration of how people come to know something about themselves and others using and testing intuition. Bion’s interest in intuition in psychoanalytic epistemology is supported by French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose works Bion annotated (see Torres, 2013). He described this intuitive connection as “the K link” (Bion, 1962a). Otto Kernberg has taken a different line. In “Adolescent Sexuality in the Light of Group Processes” (Kernberg, 1980), using Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, he illustrates adolescent oedipal couple dynamics that involve rejection of the social family groupings from which the protagonists came, discovery of an isolated sexuality of their own, and a romantic love that can never survive the hostility between the families they each represent. First love is a life-or-death issue. The couple cling to each other in their discovery of an adhesive identification that embodies a fixed idea that repudiates aggression, ambivalence, and adolescent states of confusion. Kernberg suggests that, in the young couple, the oedipal dynamics in each partner reject the rule of the father and the loyalty to the mother in favour of expressing an unconscious aggressive rejection of family mores in order to discover an enduring love of their own that they imagine is immortal. If adolescent love repudiates the social group, Kernberg proposes a reciprocal hostility of the social group, with its violent and aggressive envious attack against the young couple. This reveals, in the unfolding tragedy, the depth of the disillusioning dynamics that all adolescents face as they move from isolated romantic love towards becoming a couple socialized and eventually partnered

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within a community of celebration and acceptance. It also reveals the aggressively defended pain for adults of their own experience of losing the romantic illusions of youth. Along the way, civilized humanity has produced a wealth of song, music, poetry, film, and literature in the romantic tradition, all of which has deeply influenced the psychoanalytic task of finding expression for emotion and passion (see Snell, 2013).

The internalized combined parent object Before taking that exploration further, it is worth noting two opposing perceptions of the internalized object relation of the combined parental figure, a key model of couple relating. The first is Klein’s concept of the combined parental figure, which she drew from her child patients’ drawings and play. She described this internalized pair as a consequence of the infant’s sadistic desire to penetrate the mother’s body and aggressively rob it of its contents, producing the terrifying phantasy of the mother’s body containing the father’s penis, along with other internal objects from mother’s insides, that will vengefully attack the helpless infant (Klein, 1932). This points towards the internal imago of the couple within the child as the object of terrifying annihilating and castrating power, expressed by Bion as a mad-driving ego-destructive superego (Bion, 1967b) before which the child must repress or split off desires of an aggressive nature with a self-sacrifice echoed in primitive religion. If Klein’s elucidation of children’s primitive phantasies belonged to her paranoid-schizoid position, then Meltzer’s idea of the internalized combined object belonged to her depressive position. Indeed, he argues that it is the essence of the creative capacity to manage relations between different internal objects. In describing the couple family, he describes the capacity of the couple to “carry between them the functions of generating love, promoting hope, containing depressive pain and thinking” (Meltzer & Harris, 1994, p. 426; 2013, p. 68). In such a family, the couple’s task is to enable dependence upon them from their children for “the modulation of their mental pain to a level consonant with growth . . . [which] will place them in conflict with any member promulgating hate, sowing despair,

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emanating persecution, or creating confusion” (1994, p. 426; 2013, p. 68). It is these family dynamics that facilitate the introjection of the creative combined parent. This model provides us with an enriching picture of the process of internalized object relationship with a combined couple as an internal anchor in the storms of life to prevent drowning in emotional overload. There is no doubt that it draws upon and parallels Bion’s concept of container–contained dynamics and focuses on the possible relationship between social relations within the family and community on the one hand, and internalized object relations on the other, which is the project of this chapter.

Belonging to a body larger than your own Thomas Ogden describes the bi-personal theory of psychoanalysis as the analytic third (2004). Central to his description is the unconscious transference and countertransference relationship, which is greater than the sum of the two participants. Parallel to this development is field theory (Civitarese, 2013; Ferro & Basile, 2009), which can be traced from its origins in the United States, in the social research work of Kurt Lewin (1945), who explored, via participant observation, the functioning of groups, organizations, and society, through Bion, whose links to Lewin in his initial work on groups (Bion, 1961) are well evidenced by Torres (2013). Some of Lewin’s key concepts found in Bion are: participant observation, esprit de corps, the social field of forces, and the social atmosphere or climate (K. Lewin, 1945). Centring field theory on the bi-personal field (Baranger & Baranger, 2008; Ferro, 1999, 2002) moves away from Lewin’s and Bion’s original social field by narrowing observations to those that omit social meanings and context. This chapter seeks to reverse this trend to narrow the field to its bi-personal frame and seeks to recover Bion’s discovery of the social field in Lewin’s work and re-apply it in the psychoanalytic context, complete with transferences within the social sphere. In reviewing Bion’s work on groups, Sanfuentes (2003) traces his incorporation of psychotic mechanisms and unconscious phantasy as key ideas to the influence of Melanie Klein. Bion’s early work on groups proposed, beneath the basic assumptions, a latent

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level that unconsciously draws groups together emotionally. He proposed a protomental level in the group, where “what was physical and what was emotional could not be distinguished” (Bion, 1961). For Bion, this is the arena in which emerging experience enters a domain he described as approaching “O”, or ultimate reality, that is, in the end, unknowable and mysterious. Later he appeared to drop his emphasis on protomentality, substituting for it the individualized beta screen upon which sensations from the body appear, demanding the alpha function of maternal reverie to receive, digest, and make sense of the body’s bombardment. It is the link between protomentality, with its group aspect, and the presence or absence of a containing alpha function that provides the key theme of this chapter. This focus shapes exploration of the experience of belonging to a body bigger than one’s own in order to understand the move to wider and deeper relations with the pair in relation to individuals, groups, and organizations. The question is, what shape can be found to describe and contain the larger body that is the group, and what metaphor might provide a way of describing what holds it together? This question echoes sculptor Anthony Gormley’s quote at the head of this chapter defining how human subjectivity is to be represented collectively by the human body. Esther Bick’s evocative idea of a second skin formed by children to cope with failures in parental psycho-physical containment provides a powerful metaphor to describe the way individuals may make use of a group’s prevailing emotionality to support deficits in their own (Bick, 2002). I have suggested that Anzieu’s (1984, 1990) idea of a group having a skin of its own provides a crucial link between the unmentalized experience at the level of sensation and the need for a group with a particular survival dynamic. This dynamic describes the skin as providing the container for managing the quantum of overwhelming sensations that might otherwise psychotically drive individuals out of their minds and make them sick (Morgan-Jones, 2009, 2010a, 2010b). Bion later described this as the soma-psychotic. (See Meltzer, 1986, chapters 2 and 3—a main resource for this argument.) Bion’s basic assumption groups thus provide a social and emotional skin within which their unmentalized emotions can be sheltered while the group expresses them vicariously.

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It is from this model for enquiry that this chapter seeks to elucidate the primitive and emergent individualized sensation, transformed through emotion to phantasy, character, narrative, and thought (Ferro, 2002). It also explores the interrelatedness between bodily experience and belonging to a collective or “corporate” body bigger than one’s own, which reveals how the pair relates across the skins or contact barriers between individual, group, and community. This develops the metaphor of the body for the larger group of which one is a member, which provokes an unconscious experience of a somatized sense of the organization, not just in the conscious and unconscious mind, but anchored within bodily experience. This demands the capacity, highlighted by Bion, to move between two vertices without anxiety about the transition between them taking over. It is for this anxiety to be contained that a container is sought. In this framework, the relatedness between the couple and the wider social group is the challenge to be addressed.

Bion’s ecological method: the caesura and changing the field of study Bion’s method can be described as ecological in the way he construes each object of study within a wider environment. His methodology is best understood by reference to his later idea about emotional growth and development—namely, that it takes place across a divide between contrasting experiences accompanied by catastrophic anxiety, which he associates with the embodied experience of the caesura of birth (Bion, 1977): from one state of being and a containing environment—the foetus in the womb—through the caesura of birth, to another state of being and containment: the newborn dependent on the psycho-physical “womb” of mother’s thoughtful care. Bion’s methodology makes a similar series of moves in the field of study, each heralding his idea of container–contained ♀♂, with each dimension contained by belonging to a larger body. In chapter 5 of Experiences in Groups (1961), Bion develops this methodology of shifting the field of study and observation. He

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begins by ­noting Freud’s move from internal psychology of the individual to the view that investigating the unconscious of the individual can take place only through exploring the unconscious transference of emotion upon another. He then widens the field of study further to include the group as a context in which to study primitive psycho-physical emotional states, and then moves again to speculate on the epidemiological meaning of physical symptoms as expressions of particular social group dynamics (Morgan-Jones & Torres, 2010; Torres, 2010b). This leads him on to enquire about possible associations between a group dynamic at work in society and the meaning and use of money. (Further exploration relating psychodynamics and the meaning of money in analysing the 2007–2008 banking crisis can be found in Morgan-Jones, 2011.)

Fields of enquiry—the couple in context In this section, we begin by exploring the baby’s experience of belonging to a body bigger than its own, both in and out of the womb, and then move on to exploring how such a pair belongs to a group, in a way that provides the model for making seven shifts in the field of enquiry into learning from experience. 1. Birthing, breathing, and drowning: mother-and-baby pairs in a swimming group. 2. Missing sibling dynamics in a psychotherapy group for couples. 3. Twinship as a real and imagined field for exploring the pair in the group. 4. Somatizing experiences as a psychotic defence against intimacy in a group-analytic psychotherapy setting. 5. The secret hated couple in an organizational setting. 6. Social dynamics of pairing in the celebrity cult. 7. The internalized couple: genetic, intrapsychic, and sociopolitical perspectives.

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Birthing, breathing, and drowning: mother-and-baby pairs in a swimming group As part of their training of child psychotherapists at the Tavi­ stock Clinic in the 1970s, Martha Harris and Esther Bick pioneered the weekly observation of mother-and-baby pairs (Harris & Bick, 1987). In his 2008 presentation From Baby to Boardroom, Ross Lazar adapted this methodology to the training of organizational consultants, through observation of managers’ meetings. I had the opportunity to observe mothers and babies in a weekly small group, discovering that their babies could swim.1 The context is a warm pool with a facilitator and a group of 4–6 mother-and-baby pairs.2 Much of the activity of the facilitator is based upon providing reassurance to the adults that their baby will enjoy and be able to re-discover in the water a gravity-defying familiarity that, out of the water, involves carrying. Her task is both reassurance and challenge. Observing one exercise in the group, the facilitator takes each child in turn while sitting on the side of the pool and drops the child into the water from a height of about 2 feet. In managing the inevitable anxiety of the mother, who is nearby, the facilitator is concerned to demonstrate that the baby is intensely alert to mother’s capacity to manage her own anxiety. When babies are dropped into the water, if all goes well, they will close their mouth under water, open their eyes, and, turning the head in mother’s direction, swim towards her, to be gathered into her waiting arms. If mother shows anxiety, breathing in at the moment of dropping, the baby senses it, imitates mother breathing in, panics in the water and needs rescuing by being brought to the surface. Mothers are helped sometimes by being encouraged to look away at the moment of dropping to prevent the baby seeing anxiety on mother’s face. If mother breathes out slowly, the baby also imitates her and is able to swim back to her safely. After the session, mothers emerge from the changing-room full of chatter with each other and with their damp, dressed,

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and excited babies. A main topic of conversation between the mothers observed was sharing experiences of giving birth to their children.

Discussion Little has been written about the psychoanalysis of breathing; however, it does suggest a rich avenue for exploring how incorporation and internalization of experience occurs. In exploring experiences of breathing in the pool, the transmission of anxiety, and the fear of drowning, I would suggest the hypothesis that the group offers a containing context where mothers can discover that their baby can swim if they can manage their anxiety in a way that does not impinge on the baby. This facilitates the baby’s capacity to move between a pre-natal and post-natal experience in a way that replays for each of them the inevitable trauma, pleasure, and risks of childbirth. Bion’s suggestion of taking up Freud’s notion that there is continuity between pre- and post-natal experience leads to a model for secure attachment and safety in the world that Jean-Michel Quinodoz (1993) has described using the analogy of internal buoyancy. This observation illustrates this metaphor in a literal way. For the purposes of this chapter, this illustrates not only Bion’s underlining of the caesura as a method of exploration, but also how the mother–baby couple can fulfil the internalization of the symbolic combined parental figure, with its paternal challenge for independence and its maternal reassurance and holding. Each pair also depends upon the encouragement of the group, with the facilitator enabling identification between the baby–mother pairs and containing the inevitable competition, with some pairings better attached, more mature, or more vigorous and confident. The group needs and loves the pair for its capacity to contain these opposites in promoting development and the life-saving confidence to swim.

* * * In the group, the babies also learn much from imitating and discovering security in vigorous and playful splashing from each other. It is this peer dynamic that is studied next.

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Missing sibling dynamics in a psychotherapy group for couples Couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy involves a pair of therapists working with couples who are struggling to make sense of the painfulness and anxieties that shape their relationship. It is the unconscious bond between the couples that is the focus of attention: this bond of pain and anxiety joins them, and yet their different ways of defending against it result in conflict and aggression that recycles their pathology.3 I was working with Nancy MacKenzie, a colleague group analyst. The relationships of a number of the couples had become entrenched in the way they could no more separate than they could bear to stay together. Their mutual tormenting unconscious couple bond and shared unconscious phantasy (Dicks, 1967) created violent and opposing forces, resulting in the confusion of each one experiencing an identity lost in the other (Perkel, 2007). This sibling and peer dynamic, described by Juliet Mitchell (2000, 2003), is characterized by a split-off alternation between murderous competition and passionate belonging with siblings. Relief can be found only in belonging to a peer group that can contain this emotional volcano through its prescribed roles and defined pecking order. Mitchell suggests that during the so-called latency stage of development, sexual sublimation is directed at desire for belonging to the group or gang of friends. Bion (1961) suggested that psychotic experience is provoked by the demands of a group dynamic that alienates the individual. Mitchell suggests, in contrast, that psychotic breakdowns, when they occur during this period, reveal how much belonging to the group is not so much productive of psychotic mechanisms but, rather, that young people seek the group as a cure to contain their internal sense of fragmentation and psychosis (Mitchell, 2014). Without a capacity to attach to a containing group, they break down. In several of the couples whom we were treating, there was an emotional disturbance, resulting in a particular unrecognized

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grief after the premature death, loss, or absence of significant siblings. Some of the couple partners had come from families in which their siblings were of one sex and they had unconsciously sought a partner who was the missing sibling of the opposite sex. Some had had the experience, through the early death of a sibling, of being a replacement child, or else receiving missing sibling transferences from one of their parents. In establishing a group of three or four couples with two therapists, we selected couples where each couple dynamic was shaped in part by these missing sibling dynamics.4 Competitive and intimate regressions that enabled both the men and the women in the group to rapidly bond with same- and oppositesex “re-discovered siblings” in love, hateful rivalry, and the sadness of loss were facilitated. The group created a matrix for each sex to discover their incestuously forbidden phantasies. This provided ample opportunity for the sibling dynamics within each couple to be raised to consciousness through cross-group identifications and worked through. The particular focus of symbolic re-discovery and deep grieving was in the discovery of lost siblings, in roleresponsiveness in the group. This enabled comparison of experiences in the social setting of the group. It facilitated the experience of belonging to the body of the group, which was bigger than one individual’s own body and provided a much-needed group skin within which containment could be shaped for what had never been conceived or thought about. This matrix provided an internalization of these intense paired sibling identifications. In providing a pair of therapists, the group also subliminally offered the internalization of a couple relationship that was confronting, fair, and containing in a flexible way that echoed what may have been left to be desired in the families in which group members had grown up. In consequence, the relationship within the couples in the group could be reviewed and re-negotiated in the light of new understandings. They could discover the pain of what they had not known they had been seeking and discover what each of them was defending against.

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Recovery was in discovering what they had been sick of trying desperately to find it in each other. Sometimes this enabled the couple to distinguish each other without separating; sometimes, however, they were sadly and more wisely equipped to separate, having realized the pathological nature of their mutual choice of partner.

* * * From the complexity of these intertwined projective mechanisms we now turn to what is perhaps the archetypal model of imagined intimate relating and knowing in exploring the experience of twins as a couple in the social context.

Twinship as a real and imagined field for exploring the pair in the group Making a further shift in the field of observation raises the question of how the desire for the ultimate intimacy of couple relating may be expressed in twinship, and how twinship is shaped by shared social phantasy. In ground-breaking work, Vivienne Lewin has explored the complex relationship between the desired twin and the reality of twin experience, both within twin pairs and as witnessed by other family members. She also explores the clinical psychoanalytic context of the transference and countertransference experience of twinning. For this section I am largely indebted to Vivienne Lewin, with whom I trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and with whom I enjoyed many years of peer supervision, enabling me to witness these observations under construction. In her book, The Twin in the Transference (V. Lewin, 2004, 2014), Lewin builds on Bion’s profound insight into the way the longing for the twin is shaped by the desire for the part-object relationship, with the faultless need-meeting breast representing perfect responsive understanding and offering moments of perfect at-oneness. However, the idealized contact waxes and wanes, resulting in the phantasized imaginary twin described by Bion (1967b). This object relation embodies, both physically and emotionally, the fusion of a need being met by a perfectly attuned object, creating a symbiotic

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phantasy. This shared object, creating one mind for two, can allow no differentiation or space between the couple. For actual twins, there is a close bond that is established at a sensate level within the womb. This is well illustrated by ultrasound technology revealing intimate and competitive gestures and movements. The consequence for the post-natal twin is an intimate companion who can represent a bond that protects them both from the uncertainties of the competition for the relationship with mother. This bond can also be complicated by the interaction between twins and their wider social context. Among these influences is the way families and society treat twins. On the one hand, they can be seen as identical and inseparable; on the other, they are perceived as each representing differentiated personal qualities—for example, one the dominant and the other the passive partner—thereby enhancing the powerful projective mechanisms between twins. This particular dynamic is compounded by mothers who deal with the struggle to care for two babies at once by treating them almost as a group. Indeed, in one chapter that draws on work with a support group for mothers of twins, Lewin draws on a quote from a mother describing the trio of herself with her twins as “a walking crowd”. In group terms, it is possible to track the alternation between psycho-physical fission and fusion, along with traumatizing impingements on differentiation and individuation, that parallels these twinning dynamics. Bion’s model for describing shared basic assumptions and emotionality in groups provides a description of what is coherent that holds groups together. Earl Hopper has provided a summary of developments from Bion’s ideas to include what is incoherent and fragmented in group dynamics. This, he suggests, is caused by shattering traumatized and traumatizing experiences where people cluster around the refusal to form a group other than on their own terms, and where every member has an identity, like a collection of identical aggregates. Alternatively, a group may be massified in attacking the right of any other group to have an existence or identity of its own, as found vividly in racial hatred and xenophobia. These are the hallmarks of groups characterized by incohesion, aggregation, and massification,

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with consequent mind-losing traumatic and psychotic experience that often is embodied in violation of others, if not actual violence (Hopper, 2003). But if this begins to describe the challenge for mothers, it is compounded by social fascination with the experience of twinship that enhances pressure from the external world upon the parents and upon the twins themselves. As Lewin points out, it is fascination with the embodiment of this “perfect pair”, illustrating the lost desire for perfect psychosomatic accompaniment and mutual recognition, that adds to the difficulty of facilitating individualized development for each twin. This, in itself, illustrates the social pressure upon mothers of twins, revealing the dynamic that Turquet has described as a group sharing the phantasy that they can survive only within oneness embodying the protomental aspects of a shared pairing basic assumption (Turquet, 1974). I have suggested that in an enmeshed narcissistic twinship, the twins occupy a single, thick psychic skin that forms a common identity membrane around the pair. In contrast, the psychic membrane between the twins is especially thin, is highly permeable and allows extensive projective identification to take place between the twin pair. Psychic movement away from the other twin is experienced both as a loss of part of the self and as exposure to a void outside the common psychic membrane and enables the twin patient to develop an identity separate from the twin relationship. But the separation of psychic twins also engenders terror and a fear of fragmentation. [V. Lewin 2004, p. 138]

I would suggest that it is fear of this fragmentation that leads both the twins and the family and social context to treat them as a fused unit, with its consequent group dynamic. The heart of Lewin’s work is expressed in her clinical material, which illustrates the particular way in which the analyst is pressurized to become the imagined perfect partner, deadening differentiation and development. This narcissistic aspect of relating is also accompanied by an opposite and often violent projective identification, where the analyst is left carrying the hope that a differentiated relating might be possible. Such projections are violent in that a refusal to countenance them feels like a life-or-death issue—as if

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differentiation might incur catastrophic fatal consequences for the twin. This issue is vividly illustrated in a final chapter, entitled “Till death us do part”, which describes the shaping and inhibiting of agonized and releasing grief in the experience of the death of one twin. This exploration of real and imagined twinship provides key evidence about the complexity and entrenchment of the psychodynamics of belonging to a body bigger than one’s own. Once again, as in the previous example of the mother-and-baby swimming group, it is the interaction between the interpersonal projective identifications and the shared social phantasies within the family and social group that contribute to the possibilities of development or, conversely, to its being still-born, in the sense of being both delivered but deadened.

* * * The following section moves to a further field of observation in exploring how individuals can carry within their own bodies a group’s dis-ease about the buried desire for pairing.

Somatizing experiences as a psychotic defence against intimacy in a group-analytic psychotherapy setting The focus for exploration shifts now to the relationship between the individuals in the psychotherapy group with its protomental matrix of unconscious experience waiting to be brought to life. A member of a weekly analytic psychotherapy group misses a number of sessions because of migraines. She is an important leader in the group, offering deep attunement to the suffering of others, although she is reticent to share much of her own story. The group has mobilized an alternative therapist. In what appears an un-negotiated procedure, each person in the group is interviewed by one other member, in a series of pairings, with encouragement to reveal their painful current life story and being offered remedial cures and consolations by the group. This swallows the possibility of conflict, competition, and anger.

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Difficulties and disappointment in the choice of life partner is a shared experience in the group, with divorce, illness, failed or lost sexual intimacy, and profound loneliness common experiences among members. In one session she describes her previous week’s migraine, which kept her from the group, as a “blinding” and “furious headache”. She had retired to her bed in a darkened room to deal with the torment of sensations and pain in her head. She seeks the feeling that her body is floating away from her mind on a womb-like sea of serenity and comfort. Her associations take her to experiences where, as a child, she had felt at the mercy of her parents’ stormy relationship, breaking down, leaving her to keep the peace in the family and avoid provoking anyone, finding her only comfort in isolation. Other members offer gentle solace, taking the cue from her leadership style, whereby she has shaped the group. It is like an agreement on an attempted cure, with each member taking a turn to empathize and reveal their own example of comfort, with days off sick, bed rest, quiet music, massages—each solace covertly competing with the others for soothing and quieting the noise of the pained body. In my own countertransference I am made to feel redundant (a) as a therapist, (b) as a leader of the group, which already has its own leader/therapist, (c) as a possible dependable or comforting parent figure, or (d) as a sexual being. If I am any kind of parent, it is one who is not seen; it reminded me, at the time, of neglected or abandoned children who, in scanning a room, appear not to see their own mother. In a subsequent session, after some of these dynamics have been interpreted and worked through, the group appears ready for dream work. One group member has the dream of a mother who can be seen with one eye by a small baby, but the other eye can see only a migraine-type haloed blur. This is associated to the internalized lost mother, unseen by the abandoned baby even when she returns. Eventually this leads to the migraine sufferer revealing her sense of envious competition with others, thinking that they might have had deeper and longer individual

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therapies with the group conductor, signifying a lost experience of childhood that cannot be restored. In consequence, the group’s migraines, expressed through the body of one of its members, reduce in frequency, and the group develops a readiness to face a new round of dealing more robustly with aggressive and sexual experience through a different member.

The body of the individual and the body of the group The relationship between the individual’s bodily somatization and the body of the group could be thought of as presenting one of its members with a recurring somatic disorder that they are determined to cure with therapeutic understanding and kindness. This dynamic can be seen as an example of what Nitsun (1996) has described as anti-group resistance that preludes group development. One theme of the group described above is that there are many family experiences of failed and conflicted marriages, both past and current. But the group also has a failed marriage of its own. Its setting fails to provide a fantasy opportunity for marriage with any one of its members or, indeed, its leader, as sexuality has been difficult for the group to explore and express, perhaps because of the fear of the rivalry that might ensue. The group illustrates the patterning of emotions and behaviour predicated upon the need to belong to the dominant demands of the group culture, shaped by the valency of at least one of its members. Members lose their individual skins that hold them together and borrow, instead, a group skin, represented in the prescribed maternal and physical care of the proposed cures (Anzieu, 1984, 1989; Ulnik, 2007). Using Bion’s pairing dynamic, the body of this group can be interpreted as dominated by the desire for a paired intimacy with a new beginning. The child of the group, the hoped-for outcome, was to be maternal consolation and empathic attention for the painful and complex life situations of individual members. In this phantasy the unborn aspects of the personalities of members might have safe passage and birth into the outside world.

* * *

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Having established the possibility of somatic symptoms being an expression of the protomental aspects of a group through group analysis, the argument now turns to a larger social group—an organizational work body.

The secret hated couple in an organizational setting As an organizational consultant, I was invited to work with a multidisciplinary team from a community psychiatric service. Communications had gone awry, with the senior administrator refusing to speak with the male team leader; there was a profound sense of disgruntlement and demoralization in the team. After being tested for my integrity by some searching challenges, the team launched into an aggressive series of attacks. Although these went in different directions, it was the two noncommunicators who were the focus of the fury and frustration. It appeared that the when team leader had arrived two years earlier, he had flirted with all the women, especially with the senior administrator, whom he then jilted. She began a campaign of complaints against him, resulting in a complaint to management about being put upon by extra demands for work, resolved by appointing a junior administrative officer. The team leader then began an affair with this younger woman, in a way that was a half-known secret. This process resulted in deep splits within the team, between the different sexes, the different professional groups, and different age groups. The main fear was that gossip and private information might pass between the team leader and the junior administrator as part of their intimate “pillow talk”. The team leader was deeply surprised at the venom that was expressed in the room, believing that his privacy was being intruded upon, and it took tumultuous hard talking for the couple to face the effect their relationship was having on the team. Inputs by the consultant were designed to contain the

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emotions in the situation, with the aim that they could be used to understand the depth of mistrust and divisiveness within the team and the extent to which it was undermining professional relating. He also interpreted the possibility that the intimacy of the one-to-one work the team was doing with patients left them hungry for quality emotional support from their team leader, upon whom they had hoped to depend as they had upon his predecessor. One consequence of this consultation was to seek elements of group and peer supervision that had been a neglected aspect of professional support and development. Eventually the pair went to the HR department, confessed their relationship, and acknowledged that it had contributed to a team’s dysfunctionality; each was moved to work in a different sector of the psychiatric service. Subsequently the relationship broke up. Sexual affairs at work are often problematic, especially in the caring professions, which are partly shaped by staff who have joined the profession to deal with some of their own emotional deficits. The emotional demands of offering dependent relationships to disturbed and acting-out patients creates demands for dependency upon a team leader. This need for intimate and dependent relating underlay the team culture that had been adequately met by the previous older team leader. The new leader was unable to meet this challenge and became emotionally needy himself. The couple could be seen as unconsciously enacting unmet needs for intimacy, and yet they were hated for breaking professional boundaries within the team.

* * * The need for intimacy and its perverse expression is now explored within the wider social sphere.

Social dynamics of pairing in the celebrity cult Bion had the idea that if the matrix of shared basic assumptions was what unconsciously held a group together, then some tasks in

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society demanded that these emotions precisely support an effective work group. If Bion were writing his theory of how the basic assumption of pairing within a group could be expressed in work group activity, he might have revised his view that it is mainly the aristocracy who illustrate such a dynamic in society. Whereas the aristocracy might have provided a rich illustration of the pairing dynamic at work in the 1950s, the pop culture revolution of the 1960s suggests a new candidate for this role—namely, the celebrity cult. I have described this phenomenon as a cult in order to combine the individual experiences of what has been termed celebrity worship syndrome, with the vast media expansion and financial investment in the promotion and demotion of individual and prominently paired relationships between celebrities and between individual fans and their idols. It could be suggested that the loved and hated heroes and gods, in ascendance and demise, being elevated and humiliated by vicarious group projections represent a new kind of religion, with a powerful hold over its devotees. Historically this phenomenon could be compared to the ancient Roman policy of keeping the populace distracted with circuses and gladiatorial combat to prevent them from revolution. (See Morgan-Jones, 2012.) First I want to illustrate the range of individual dynamics of fan and idol as a pair. At one end, celebrities and gossip about them accompany the entertainment scene, offering distraction from the pain of work or family setbacks. At a deeper level, such fandom might extend to people or groups imitating social identities of their idols, whether in their taste in music, dress choice, or life style. At a perverse level, this imitation and identification can lead to obsessive following through social media and even stalking and, in extreme cases, murder, where jealous fans cannot bear to share their obsession with others. Here we can see violence and loss of self, illustrated by projective identification—the individual projecting part of him/herself into another and alternately idealizing or denigrating the projected part. This explains to some extent how there comes to be such a fascination with shamelessly idolizing stars, whatever their behaviour. Such idolization is followed by vicarious delight expressed by individuals and groups and encouraged by the press when a

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star falls from fame or behaves in shameless ways sexually or with money, alcohol, or drugs. A central theme in this chapter is the link between bodily experience and belonging to the social body. In searching for ways to describe the physical nature of social identity, anthropologist of the body Terence Turner describes the social skin: Decorating, covering, uncovering or otherwise altering the human form . . . seems to have been a concern of every human society of which we have knowledge. This objectively universal fact is associated with another of a more subjective nature— that the surface of the body seems everywhere to be treated, not only as the boundary of the individual as a biological and psychological entity, but as the frontier of the social self as well. [Turner, 2007, p. 83]

In relation to the group of fans who worship a celebrity, the body of the celebrity represents the embodiment of the group, held together by their skin. The sound skin provides an envelope of music and words, while fashion statements and tattoos used to decorate and shape the skin become the protomental shapes that forge a group identity (Anzieu, 1989; Bion, 1961; Torres, 2010b). The shameless ways in which bare skin is exposed provides a sexualized form of attachment, marked by a fusion of identity and a frenzy of ecstatic sound that merge a group with its leader. In short, we are dealing with the dynamics of oneness described by Turquet (1974) and incohesion with aggregation and massification proposed by Hopper (2003). These authors suggest that these dynamics are developments of Bion’s theory of three basic assumptions that bind groups into a fourth that is essentially incoherent. This incoherent, traumatized, and confusional dynamic suggests, however, that what is being described includes both emotional and physical dimensions of the experience, suggesting that the accounts are related more closely to what Bion described as the protomental matrix from which the basic assumptions develop.

* * * For the final step in shifting the field of study, I now turn to the internalization of couple object relationships shaped by political, cultural, and racial identities.

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The internalized couple: genetic, intrapsychic, and sociopolitical perspectives War trauma undermines the internalization of combined parents facilitating growth. Clinically, exploration of war trauma and its intergenerational transmission (Fromm, 2012) includes children whose parents have been torn apart by being victims of the shadows of the Holocaust, genocide, tyrannical military rule, imprisonment, refugee experience, and dictatorships (Morgan-Jones, 2013). It also includes conflicts established within an invaded country when, in order to survive, some join the resistance and others become collaborators, echoing, even once the war has ended, the vicious experience of mutual retaliation comparable to a civil war. A little-recognized consequence of war trauma is that suffered by children of parents one of whom belonged to the invading army and the other was a local national—a significant and under-observed phenomenon following the Second World War. This is further complicated where, for example, a German father with a Dutch, Danish, Polish, Norwegian, or Belgian wife fled Germany at the start of the war, seeking refuge in his wife’s country. This country was then invaded, resulting in the shame-ridden trauma of father being on the run during the war and the subject of prejudice afterwards. The experiences of shame and shamelessness recycled down the generations indicate the inner destroyed parental object that could not be combined. Such emotions and behaviour also apply through the invaded skin of any sense of national belonging within which refuge might be sought. (These dynamics have been explored in a paper entitled The Invaded Skin given to a professional group in Warsaw, Poland; Morgan-Jones, 2014.) In developing a usable hypothesis to address the clinical complexities of such situations, I have conjectured an oscillation between three types of experiences: 1. pre-conceptual trauma; 2. conceptual remembered trauma; 3. trauma through social and political identity confusion. The first two come from work by Lopez-Corvo (2014), the third from a collection, edited by Gerald Fromm, exploring from a ­number of

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perspectives on what he and his colleagues have described as the bigger picture that shapes intergenerational transmission of trauma (Fromm, 2012). The interplay of these three as a take on the internalized couple in relation to the group is explored in a further example drawn from group relations.

Group relations and interbreeding Group relations conferences offer the experience of learning about authority, leadership, and unconscious processes within and between groups in organizations. They usually involve 3–14-day residential conferences that give people a range of opportunities to reflect on the way they unconsciously tend to construe organizational situations and allow themselves to be open to new future possibilities. During systems events in North America where groups can form according to their own wishes and explore relatedness between their group and the whole organizational system, it is common to find groups clustering around issues of identity, race, and culture. During one such 5-day event, one such group sought consultancy for their dilemma about what they might be representing in how they related to other groupings that was leaving them isolated. When the consultant entered the room, it was clear that this group represented genetically the range of migrations in the North American continent over the previous 200 years. Not only did it include Native, African, Spanish, Asian, and Central European Americans, but the group members had self-consciously selected themselves using the criterion that they came from parents whose own parents represented at least two if not more of these genetic groupings. Group members were very articulate, not just about their experience of their racial and cultural identity confusions but also about the struggle to find an identity they could feel proud of. Each possible identification was flawed in being outmatched by alternatives in a kind of internal rivalry. In exploring the meaning of their dilemma, it was possible to explore the inner and outer pressures of belonging to such a group. They could

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share their internal sense of recognizing that their parents had, as couples, braved many prejudices in the society in which they lived or to which they had migrated. Due to their choice in interracial partnering, their children had to share their overprotective silence of this burden with them. They had broken social taboos, but their parents also carried private excitement at marrying someone of a different race, which was both scorned enviously and admired in their social context. This internal ambivalent social shadow, with its accompanying pain, was also a source of pride that was hard to share except with others in a similar situation. It was suggested to the group that, as part of their struggle, they also experienced external pressure from other groups in the system that might reflect some of their dilemmas in the outside world where they lived and worked. Might it be that what they represented in the wider group was the emotional demands on behalf of all members of organizations and society to find some way of being sincere in the face of the confused and disruptive nature of post-modern community and organizational living shaped by massive uncertainties in belonging? If that was the task socially, psychoanalytically it could be seen as a problem of how to live with internal parental relationships where internalized difference was a conflicted bond inscribed on their skin and easily misrecognized or unacknowledged. The external pressure was that with their obvious internal combined parent figure of difference, they represented a deeply ambivalent object for the rest of the social system in the conference. Today’s society has claimed to have transcended taboos against mixed racial coupling with political correctness, and yet such a group continues to be misrecognized or ignored in a process that leaves them confused about the group identities and skins that contain them and their experience. I have chosen this vignette for the way it illustrates deep ambivalence on the part of the social group towards mixed-race couples. This shadows many current experiences within nations around identity and immigration with a dynamic that seeks to control what international commerce and migration of labour has already

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enacted, despite the sociopolitical delay in managing these transitions and their social dynamics emotionally. Where this chapter ends is with the challenge facing the psychoanalytic community to provide engagement and thoughtfulness about the range of conflicting identifications, both internal and external, epitomized by history, genetics, and sociopolitical circumstances. Many clinical psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have wide experience of intergenerational war trauma transmitted in their own families, as well a multiple cultural and national heritage. This provides a vital resource for elaborating engagement with these dynamics within a wider field. The place of the pair in the group, organization, and society could provide a focus for this elaboration.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to explore the pair in relation to the group, the organization, and society. It began with internalized versions of the combined parent object alternating between the paranoidschizoid and depressive positions. These suggest links to the love and hatred of the couple on the part of the group through shared unconscious phantasy and group dynamics that express unelaborated protomental confused states of mind. In making use of what I call Bion’s ecological method, I have sought to provide a range of approaches to investigate different fields in which links between different points of view may be made and contrasted when related to their wider developing matrix. Bion’s concept of the caesura between pre- and post-natal experience evidenced in the mother– baby pair swimming group is echoed in the range of group contexts described. In the couple psychotherapy group, finding the experience of the lost sibling who has never been mourned broaches a different caesura in the possibility of recovering a pre-conceptual and un-mentalized trauma that can be addressed. This theme is echoed in the discussion of twinship and in the socio-somatic symptom in the psychotherapy group suffering from a group disease about failed pairing.

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Hatred of the couple resolving the drive for intimacy sexually in the psychiatric team illustrates Kernberg’s approach to the hatred of the adolescent pair by the group. The societal context of the celebrity cult offers an insight into how social dynamics around the lost longing for intimate paired relating are sought and dramatized perversely in the group. Discussion of international experiences of war trauma and the mixed race group as part of a wider social system indicates the dynamics of confusing internalized parental object pairs that are replayed in societal attitudes to sometimes marginalized individuals who are condemned to repeat past historical trauma. My hope is that this chapter reveals further possibilities for exploration in the fields of clinical and applied psychoanalysis that connect the experience of both being a body and belonging to a collective body bigger than one’s own.

Notes 1.  The physiology of this experience is based on the fact that until around 12 months, newborns can make use of their mammalian dive reflex, which closes the flap at the top of the epiglottis and so prevents the experience of being drowned by water entering the lungs. It is possible to conjecture that this innate capacity is one of many examples of the ability to draw upon experience in the womb and a foetal way of relating to the aqueous environment. Phylogenetically, this may be a remnant of mammalian emergence from sea-bound and amphibious life in the Palaeozoic era some 350 million years ago. 2.  I am grateful to Sarah Sutton for giving an interview on her inspirational work with this group under the organizational framework of, “I Love Babies Swimming.” 3.  The accounts of clinical and social situations described in this chapter are included either with permission, generalized to protect individuals from being identified, disguised to protect recognition, or attributed where other people’s work is recorded. 4.  Inspiration for this work can be found in the work of Robin Skynner (1975; Skynner and Schlapobersky, 1989), as well as that of Bianchini and Monguzzi (2007).

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INDEX

Abraham, K., 43, 45, 46 acting in, within the transference, 5, 62, 78 adherent narcissistic disorder, 32 borderline syndrome as, 4 adhesive identification, 167 aggregation, group, 178, 186 aggression: dissociated, enactment of, 23, 24 repressed, 24 and sadistic attacks, enactment of, 5 agoraphobia, 41 and claustrophobia, link between, 95 Alberoni, F., 12 alpha function, 76 of maternal reverie, 170 analysis: interminable, 33 mental space of, 32 analyst, “lavatory”, 22 analytic space, shared, problem of, 36 analytic third, 169 annihilation: defences against, 50

fear of, 45, 50, 53, 56, 150 psychotic anxiety of, 43, 45, 50, 52 anxiety(ies): catastrophic, 171 defences against, 50 oedipal: see oedipal anxiety(ies) persecutory: see persecutory anxiety(ies) primary source of, search for, 161 primitive: see primitive anxiety(ies) psychotic: see psychotic anxiety(ies) shared, 69, 74, 96 unconscious, 81 Anzieu, D., 15, 170, 182, 186 arguments, functions of, 101–103 Armstrong, D., xvi, 163, 166 attachment, libidinal, 104 autoerotism, infant’s, 12   baby, new, effects of on parents, 107–124 clinical example, 108–121 Balfour, A., xv, 2, 4, 5, 59–83, 95 Baranger, M., 169 Baranger, W., 169 Bartell, G. C., 19

207

208

index

basic assumption(s): Bion, group theories of, 4, 43, 51–54, 57, 169, 186 latent protomental level in the group, 6 dependency, 44, 150 fight–flight, 44, 150, 151 fundamental anxieties underlying, 165 pairing, 44, 150, 163, 179, 185 as secondary to extremely early primal scene, 151 shared, 178, 184 basic assumption groups, 170 Basic Law of Group Dynamics, 131 Basile, R., 169 Bell, D., xvii, 2 benign couple, 6, 149–150, 151–162 Berg, J., 122 Bergmann, M. S., 23 Bergson, H., 167 beta-elements, 165 beta screen, 170 Bianchini, B., 191 Bick, E., 170, 173 binocular perspective, 3 Bion, W. R., xv, xvi, 40, 43, 58, 65, 75, 99, 100, 136, 138, 146, 161, 168 alpha function of maternal reverie, 170 anxiety about group disintegration, 162 basic assumptions: see basic assumption(s) beta-elements, 165 beta screen, 170 binocular perspective, 3 caesura of birth, 165–166, 171–172, 174–175 concept of, 190–191 container–contained, 169, 171 containment, theories of, 2, 4, 54–55 ecological method, 171–172, 190 esprit de corps, Lewin’s concept of, 169 feared disintegration of group, 150, 158 group-analytic work, 130–131

group dynamics, theories of: early phase of, 44–45 revised, 51–54 group mentality, concepts of, 1, 2, 44 groups: work on, 169 work with, 3 Klein: analysis with, 45, 51, 167 concepts of, application/ development of, 3, 4, 6, 145 K link, 167 linking, theory of, 55 nameless dread, 40, 55 “O”, 165, 170 pairing dynamic, 6, 182, 185 participant observation, Lewin’s concept of, 169 primitive phantasies about contents of mother’s body, 130, 150 protomentality, 166, 170 small groups, Klein’s thinking on, application of, 150–152 social atmosphere or climate, Lewin’s concept of, 169 social field: in Lewin’s work, 169 of forces, Lewin’s concept of, 169 soma-psychotic, 170 twin: imaginary, 15, 177 longing for, 177 unconscious phantasy, Klein’s concept of, 96, 97, 98, 169, 175, 190 work group, 53 work-group function of group, 125 bi-personal field, 169 bi-personal theory of psychoanalysis, 169 birth, caesura of, 165–166, 171–172, 174–175 concept of, 190–191 birth trauma, 162 bisexuality, 17 bizarre objects, 49 Bleandonu, G., 44, 166

index

borderline psychopathology, 14 borderline syndrome, 14, 32, 38 as adherent narcissistic disorder, 4 Bott Spillius, E., 97 boundaries: individuals’ loss of, 99 and time, 20–24 Braunschweig, D., 12 breathing, psychoanalysis of, 174 Brenman Pick, I., 55, 65 Brief Encounter, 63 Britton, R., xv, 2, 4, 6, 29–42, 47, 65, 70, 81, 105, 107 malignant misunderstanding, fear of, 103 third position, 39,64, 66, 73 triangular space, 126, 136 Bronstein, C., 51 buoyancy, internal, 174 Burghölzli hospital, 45   caesura of birth: see birth, caesura of castration, 13, 162 symbolic, 19 castration anxiety, 13 catastrophic anxiety(ies), 171 Catherall, D. R., 98 Catty, J., ix–xi, xiii celebrity cult, 191 pairing in, social dynamics of, 172, 184 social dynamics of pairing in, 3, 172, 184–186 celebrity worship syndrome, 185 change, fear of, 103–104 children, primitive phantasies of, 168 Civitarese, G., 166, 169 claustrophobia, 33, 41 and agoraphobia, link between, 95 Cleavely, E., 104 Clulow, C., 107 Cohen, J. M., 31 Coleridge, S. T., 38 Colman, W., 122, 123 combined object(s): internalized, 168 parent, internalized, 168–169 phantasies of, 4

209

combined parental figure, 2, 168 symbolic, internalization of, 174, 189 concrete psychosomatic person, 136 confusion between self and other, 100 container–contained, 169, 171 container and contained, relations between, 55 containing, linking by, 2, 56 containment, 41, 57, 69, 75, 95, 99, 170, 171, 176 Bion’s theory of, 2 difficulties in, 103–104 early: difficulties in, 2 failure in, 4 failure of, 40, 103 maternal, in infancy, 40–42 process of, 54–55 countertransference, 4, 37, 60, 62, 65, 66, 70, 73, 78, 79, 97, 118, 143, 169, 181 experience within three-way setting, 74 experience of twinning, 177 feeling, to group-as-a-whole, 125 feeling of group becoming itself, 126 idealizing, 132 countertransference anxiety, 39 couple(s): benign, 6, 149–150, 151–162 developmental position of, 70–78 clinical example, 72–75 differentiated, 6, 148–149 dynamics of, 43, 163 and families, in group development, 126 fused persecutory, 6, 147–162 and group, psychodynamics of, 166 in group, dynamics of love and hatred towards oscillation between, 166 internal, 1, 2 internalized, 172, 187–190 mixed-race, 189 oedipal, 4, 71, 79, 167

210

index

couple(s) (continued): in organizational settings, 6 oscillating images of, 153 perceptions of, 145–164 research on, 152–161 parental: see parental couple(s) and primitive processes, 43–58 and psychic space, clinical example, 67 psychotherapy groups for, 3 quarrelling, 85–105 clinical example, 86–96 relationship of, love and aggression in, 9–27 sadomasochistic, 20 in social group, love and hate of, 6 social isolation of, 20 unconscious relations of, 85–105 warring, 6, 147–156, 161–162 couple bond, unconscious, 175 couple conglomerate, 104 couple dynamics and family dynamics, 126 couple enactment(s), 5 couple family, 168 couple and family dynamics, and triangular space, in group psychotherapy, 125–143 couple fit, 61, 96, 98 unconscious, 1 couple mentality, 1 couple psychotherapy: “oedipal setting” of, transference and enactment in, 59–83 Oedipus and triangular setting of, 65–70 transference and enactment in, 60–64 maintaining defensive equilibrium, clinical example, 63–64 triangular setting of, 65–70 couple relationship: discontinuities and splitting in, 3 love and aggression in, 2, 3, 9 projective identification in, 96–100 couple retreat, 73

couples psychotherapy group, sibling dynamics in, 175–177 couple state of mind, 75 couple therapy: multiple transferences in, 4 triangular configuration of, 74 Craiger-Smith, M., 165 current level, group operating on, 129   death, denial of one’s own, 24 defence(s): narcissistic, 4, 10 against persecutory guilt, 101 primitive: see primitive defence(s) against psychotic anxieties, 5, 101 shared, 97, 122 defence mechanism(s), 48 primitive: of introjection, 45 of splitting, 45 defensive equilibrium, maintaining, clinical example, 63–64 dependency, basic assumption of, 44, 150 dependency group, 151 depressive position, 45, 76, 149, 168 benign couple in, 6 differentiated couple in, 6 state of mind, 71 destructive narcissistic organization, 102 detached narcissistic disorder, 4, 32 developmental position(s), couple’s, 64, 70–78, 83 clinical example, 72–75 Dicks, H. V., 26, 80, 175 dictatorships, 187 differentiated couple, 6, 148, 149 differentiation, 96, 178, 179, 180 between self and other, lack of, 101 and psychotic processes, 99– 100 discontinuity(ies), capacity for, 11, 12 disintegration, fear of, 45, 150 dissociated aggression, 24 enactment of, 23

index

dissociated primitive object relationships, 19, 20 dissociation, “madonna–prostitute”, 13 dream work, 181 dynamics: group, 3, 6, 43, 44, 51, 152, 172, 178, 190 individual, 6, 152, 185 of oneness, 186 organizational, 6, 152 dyslexia, 113   ego: fragmentation of, 48 splitting of, 48 ego functions, 22 emotional force field of, 99 enactment(s), 3, 14, 19, 25, 27, 51 analysis of, 75 in couple psychotherapy, 60–64 maintaining defensive equilibrium, clinical example, 63–64 couple’s, 5, 23, 66, 79, 86, 96–103 joint, 3, 5, 96 in “oedipal setting”, of couple psychotherapy, 59–83 projective, couple’s collusive, 101 of sadistic attacks, 101 and thinking, clinical example, 76–78 transference, 66 and transference, 61 unconscious, 26 of couple, 85–105 engulfment, 95 anxieties of, 73 epistemology, psychoanalytic, 167 epistemophilic instinct, 167 and Oedipus conflict, 130 Equality Act 2010, 163, 164 esprit de corps, 169   Fain, M., 12 Fairbairn, W. D., 19

211

family(ies): couple, 168 and couples, in group development, 126 groups as, 57 Family Discussion Bureau, 80 family dynamics and couple dynamics, 126 Farrell, D., 83 father, idealized, oedipal fixation to, 16 Ferro, A., 75, 76, 169, 171 field theory, 169 fight–flight, basic assumption of, 44, 150 fight–flight group, 151 figure(s): internal: see internal figures parental, 2, 168, 174 Fisher, J. V., 59, 61, 62, 64, 80, 103, 104, 107 Fliess, W., 17 Foulkes, S. H., 131, 134, 140 group analysis, levels of communication in, 129–130 group-analytic work, 130–131 fragmentation and annihilation, fear of, 56, 179 France, A., 104 Frankfurt School, 131 Freud, S., 17, 172, 174 on couple therapy, 82 on enactment, 61 group as family relations, 52 groups as families, model of, 57 libidinal attachment, 104 Oedipus complex, 4, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 54, 58, 59, 65, 66, 145, 146, 148, 149 omnipotence of thoughts, 46 primal scene, concept of, 46 psychic reality as cause of neurosis, 29 splitting of ego, 48 Wolf Man, 46, 47, 49 Fromm, M. G., 187, 188 Frosch, A., 75

212

index

fused persecutory couple, 6, 147–162   genders, boundaries between, and perversity, 18–20 genocide, 187 Glover, E., 48 Gormley, A., 165, 170 Green, A., 12 private madness, 11, 14, 20 Grier, F., 122 Grinberg, L., 166 Grotjahn, M., 59 Grotstein, J. S., 3, 165, 166 group(s): aggregation, 178, 186 compulsion to repeat, 143 couple in, dynamics of love and hatred towards, oscillation between, 166 couple/pair in, 165–191 dependency, 151 disintegration, anxiety about, 162 experience of couple of, 3 as families, model of, 57 feared disintegration of, 150, 158 fight–flight, 44, 150, 151 incohesion, 178, 186 massification, 178, 186 operating level of: current, 129, 130 primordial, 129 projective, 129, 130, 134, 140 transference, 129, 130, 140 pairing, 151 dynamics in, 3 primitive primal scene in, 150 protomental level in, 6, 170 relational life of, triangular space in, 126 three-person relating in, 128 twinship in, 3 work-group function of, 125 group analysis, 3, 136, 137, 141, 142, 183 levels of communication in, 129–130 sibling relationships in, 139

group-analytic psychotherapy setting, psychotic defence against intimacy in, somatizing experiences as, 180–183 group development, couples and families in, 126 group dynamics, 3, 6, 43, 44, 51, 152, 172, 178, 190 group identity, formed through protomental shapes, 186 group memory, 52 group mentality, 1, 2, 44 group psychotherapy, couple and family dynamics, and triangular space in, 125–143 group relations conference, 3 group scapegoat, 53 group skin, 176, 182 group therapeutic alliance, 125 group triangular space, development and use of, 133–142 group-wide projective identification, 132 Grunberger, B., 15 guilt: oedipal, 26 unconscious, 9, 10 and Oedipus conflict, 130 persecutory, 5, 92 defence against, 101 unconscious, 10, 15, 19, 20, 21   Hadfield, J. A., 44 hallucination, negative, 133 Halton, W., xvi, 2, 3, 6, 145–164 Harris, M., 168, 173 heterosexual eroticism, 12 and maternal functions in women, incompatibility of, 12 Hewison, D., xvi, 2, 5, 96, 97, 107–123 Hinshelwood, R. D., xvi, 2, 4, 43–58 Hobson, R. P., 62 Holocaust, 187 Hopper, E., 30, 33, 126, 178, 179, 186 hysterical personality structure, 16   idealized father, oedipal fixation to, 16

index

identification: adhesive, 167 introjection and projective identification, interplay of, 140 introjective: see introjective identification projective: see projective identification identity, confusion, 188 imaginary twin, 15, 177 incohesion, group, 178, 186 individual dynamics, 6, 152, 185 individuation, 178 infantile containment, 42 failure of, 42 interbreeding, 188 intergenerational transmission: of trauma, 188 of war trauma, 187 intergenerational war trauma, 190 interminable analysis, 33 internal buoyancy, 174 internal combined parent figure, 189 internal couple, 1, 2 internal figures, 97 internalized combined object, 168 internalized combined parent object, 168–169 internalized couple, 172, 187–190 internalized parental object, love and hate of, 6 intimacy, psychotic defence against: in group-analytic psychotherapy setting, somatizing experiences as, 180–183 somatizing experiences as, 172 introjection, 43, 45, 46, 50, 51, 54, 98, 140, 141, 169 identification and projective identification, interplay of, 140 primitive defence mechanism of, 43 45 primitive processes of, 46 introjective identification, 98 intrusive projections, 103  

213

Jools, P., 122 Joseph, B., 66 Jung, C. G., 45, 46   Kanter, R. M., 152, 153, 159, 162 Kernberg, O. F., xvi, xvii, 2, 3, 7, 9–27, 167, 191 Klein, M., 50–52, 130, 145–148, 159– 163 Bion’s analysis with, 45, 51 Bion’s analyst, 167 children’s primitive phantasies, 168 combined parental figure, 2, 168 concepts of, Bion’s development of, 3, 4, 6 depressive position, 6, 45, 76, 149, 168 early Oedipus complex, 4, 146 early stages of Oedipus conflict, 151 fused persecutory couple, 162 Oedipus complex, early stages of, 46, 47, 58 paranoid-schizoid position, 45, 149, 168 parental couple, typology of, 147–150 parents fused in continuous sexual intercourse, 147 penis as representation of father, 147 primitive anxieties and mechanisms, 44 primitive defence of introjection, 43 primitive defence of projection, 43 primitive defence of splitting, 43 projective identification, 49 psychotic anxiety of annihilation, 43 psychotic level, 45 psychotic mechanisms, 169 schizoid mechanisms, theory of, 43, 48 small groups, thinking on, Bion’s application of, 150–152 unconscious phantasy(ies), 169 K link, 167  

214

index

latency stage of development, 175 “lavatory” analyst, 22 Lazar, R., 173 Lewin, K., 169 Lewin, V., 177, 178, 179 Liberman, D., 22 libidinal attachment, 104 libido, dammed-up, 162 linking: by containing, 2, 56 forms of, 2 theory of, 55 Lipgar, R. M., 166 Lopez-Corvo, R., 187 love and aggression in couple’s relationship, 9–27 love and hate: of couple in social group, 6 of internalized parental object, 6 Lyons, A., 122   MacKenzie, N., 175 “madonna–prostitute” dissociation, 13 Main, T., 54, 57 malignant misunderstanding, 4, 103 and need for agreement, 40–41 mammalian dive reflex, 191 manic-depressive patients, 45 marital fit, 97 marital infidelity, 17 massification, group, 178, 186 masturbation, 12 maternal containment, failure of, 40, 41 maternal functions, 12 and heterosexual eroticism in women, incompatibility of, 12 maternal reverie, alpha function of, 170 maternal separation, 162 Mattinson, J., 117, 122 Meltzer, D., 23, 61, 104, 168, 170 mental mixing, 31 mental space, 3, 70, 78 movement in, 66 shared, 33, 41

sharing: difficulties of, 4 narcissistic problems in, 29–42 Meyers, M. B., 122 migraine, 181 Miller, E. J., 151 Mitchell, J., 175 mixed-race couples, 189 Moen, P., 152 Monguzzi, F, 191 Montaigne, M. de, 30, 31, 32, 40 Morgan, M., 61, 75, 82, 107, 122 Morgan-Jones, R. J., xvii, 2, 3, 6, 165– 191 mother-and-baby pair swimming group, 172–174, 180, 190 multigenerational relationship, parents’, 5 murder, 148, 185 sadistic, 18   nameless dread, 40, 55 narcissism, 16, 35 narcissistic adherence, 35 thin-skinned patients, clinical example, 38–40 narcissistic defences, 4, 10 narcissistic detachment, thick-skinned patients, clinical example, 35–38 narcissistic disorder(s), 35 adherent, 4, 32 detached, 4, 32 narcissistic gratification, 18 in twinship relationship, 15 narcissistic organization, destructive, 102 narcissistic pathology, 9, 13, 17 narcissistic patients, difficulties of sharing mental space of, 4 narcissistic personality, 4 structure, 10, 16 narcissistic psychopathology, 14 narcissistic twinship, 23, 179 near-delusional certainty and intrusive projections, 103 negative hallucination, 133 neurotic psychopathology, 14

index

Nitsun, M., 182 Novakovic, A., x, xvii, 2, 5, 85–105   “O”/ultimate reality, 165, 170 object relation(s), primitive, 4 dissociated, 19, 20 object relations psychoanalysis, 58 object relations theory, shift from structure to function in, 97 obsessional certainty, 82 oedipal anxiety(ies), 50, 80, 103 oedipal configuration, of couple psychotherapy, 59, 65, 74, 81, 82 oedipal couple, 4, 71, 79, 167 oedipal crisis, 107 birth of baby as, 5 oedipal dynamics, 167 of couple with children, 122 oedipal father, 10, 16 oedipal fixation, to idealized father, 16 oedipal fulfilment, 21 oedipal guilt, 26 unconscious, 9, 10 oedipal ideals, unconscious, 17 oedipal rivals, unconscious, 17 oedipal scenarios, representing invasion of couple by excluded third party, enactment of, 14 “oedipal setting” of couple psychotherapy, transference and enactment in, 59–83 oedipal situation, 65, 66, 79, 95 unresolved ambivalences of, 18 Oedipus, and triangular setting of couple psychotherapy, 65–70 Oedipus complex, 44, 45, 54, 59, 65, 66, 145, 148, 149 early stages of, 4, 46, 47, 58, 146 Freud’s theory of, 43 Oedipus conflict, 130 early stages of, 151 Oedipus situation, 64, 79 triangular relationships of, 39 Ogden, T. H., 169 omnipotence of phantasy, 58 omnipotence of thoughts, 46

215

oneness, dynamics of, 186 organization(s), couples in, 165–191 oscillating images of, 153–161 perceptions of, 145–164 research on, 152–161 organizational consultancy, 3 psychodynamic, 145 organizational dynamics, 6, 152 organizational setting, secret hated couple in, 172, 183–184 organizational settings, couple in, 6 pairing: basic assumption of, 44, 150, 179, 185 in celebrity cult, social dynamics of, 184–186 pairing dynamics, 6, 182, 185 in group, 3 pairing group, 151 Palaeozoic era, 191 paranoid-schizoid position, 45, 79, 149, 168 fused persecutory couple in, 6 state of mind, 71 warring couple in, 6 parental coitus, child’s perceptions of, 46 parental couple(s), 6, 21, 66 combined, 4 early awareness of, 146 individual’s unconscious phantasies of, 2 typology of, in Klein’s work, 147–150 parental figure, combined, 2, 168, 174 parental intercourse, 47, 146, 150 parental object, internalized, 6, 168–169 and shared combined, love and hate of, 166 parent figure, internal, combined, 189 parenthood, new, 107–123 parents: fused in continuous sexual intercourse, 147 multigenerational relationship of, 5 participant observation, 169

216

index

part-object, 2, 46, 49, 52, 98, 177 pathological role fixation, 24–27 penis, representation of father in Klein’s work, 147 penis envy, 23 Perelberg, R. J., 38 Perkel, A., 175 persecutory anxiety(ies), 102, 104 persecutory fantasies, 140 persecutory guilt, 5, 92 defence against, 101 Person, E., 20 perverse sexuality, polymorphous, 18 perversity, 24, 25 and boundaries between genders, 18–20 phantasy(ies): children’s primitive, 168 omnipotence of, 58 primal-scene, 104 unconscious: see unconscious phantasy(ies) physical space, perception of, 29 Pines, M., 166 Pistiner de Cortinas, L., 166 polymorphous perverse activities, 19 polymorphous perverse sexuality, 18 pre-conceptual trauma, 187 pregnancy, 117, 120 primal scene, 21, 46, 49, 52, 103–104 early, 4, 51, 151 primitive, in group, 150 primal-scene phantasy, 104 primary anxiety(ies), at psychotic level, 49 primitive anxiety(ies), 44, 52 primitive defence: of introjection, 43 of projection, 43 primitive defence mechanism, of introjection, 45 primitive object relations, dissociated, 19–20 primitive phantasies, of children, 168 primitive primal scene, in group, 150

primitive processes, and couples, 43–58 unconscious, 43 primordial chaos, 40 primordial level, group operating on, 129 projection, 13, 23, 50, 51, 54, 70, 75, 98 intrusive, and so-called knowledge of other, 103 mechanism of, 49 primitive defence of, 43 primitive processes of, 46 projective enactments, couple’s collusive, 101 projective gridlock, 61 projective identification, 5, 11, 21, 34, 52–55, 66, 74, 79, 86, 185 acquisitive, 31 attributive, 31 between twins, 179 in couple relationship, 96–99 cycles of, 61, 64 excessive, 100 group-wide, 132 interpersonal, 180 introjection and identification, interplay of, 140 intrusive, 68 Klein’s concept of, 49 primitive defence of, 45, 50 processes of, in couple relationships, 3 relating by, 32 repetitive, cycles of, 98 rigid: cycles of, 71 mutual cycles of, 64 violent, 179 projective level, group operating on, 129, 130, 134, 140 projective mechanisms, 177 between twins, 178 projective system, shared, 96 protomentality, 166, 170 protomental shapes, group identity formed through, 186

index

psychic equilibrium, maintenance of, 62, 79 psychic retreat, 37, 74 couple, 73 psychic space, 2, 4, 29, 30, 59, 65–71, 76, 78, 83, 105 and couple, clinical example, 67 dimensions of, clinical example, 72–73 sharing, 2, 68, 81 difficulties in, 66, 82 psychic takeover, 69 fear of, shared, 74 psychic twins, separation of, 179 psychoanalysis: bi-personal theory of, 169 of breathing, 174 psychoanalytic epistemology, 167 psychodynamic organizational consultancy, 145 psychosis(es), 46, 49, 175 psychosomatic people, concrete, 136 psychotherapy group(s): for couples, 3 sibling dynamics in, 172 psychotic anxiety(ies), 5, 43, 49, 50, 52, 92, 101, 151 of annihilation, 43, 52 defence against, 5, 101 psychotic defence, against intimacy, somatizing experiences as, 172 psychotic level, 52, 54 in early developmental period, Klein’s theories of, 45–51 primary anxiety at, 49 psychotic mechanisms, 51, 169, 175 psychotic processes, and lack of differentiation between self and other, 99–100 psychotic psychopathology, 14 psychotic states of mind, 99, 100   quarrelling couple, 85–105 clinical example, 86–96 see also warring couple Quinodoz, J.-M., 174

217

 racial hatred, 178 Ramarajan, L., 152 Raphael-Leff, J., 120 Rapoport, R., 153 Reid, E. M., 152 repetition compulsion, 61, 141 group, 143 Rey, H., 66 Rhesus incompatibility, 41 Rickman, J., 44 Rilke, R. M., 31 role enactments, 25 role fixation(s): pathological, 24–27 rigid, 26 Romeo and Juliet, 167 Rosenfeld, H., 22, 102 Rustin, M. J., xvi, 60 Ruszczynski, S., 65, 82, 98, 107   sadism, and Oedipus conflict, 130 sadistic attacks, enactment of, 101 sadomasochism, 10 sadomasochistic couples, social isolation of, 20 sadomasochistic relationships, 19 Sanfeliu, I., 45 Sanfuentes, M., 169 Schafer, R., 122 schizoid mechanism(s), Klein’s theory of, 43, 48 schizoid personality, 4, 33 schizophrenia, 49, 51 Schlapobersky, J., 191 second skin, 170 Second World War, 187 secret hated couple in organizational setting, 183–184 Segal, H., 51 self-representing event, 62 sexual boredom, 10 sexuality, perverse, polymorphous, 18 Shakespeare, W., Romeo and Juliet, 167 shared mental space, 33, 41 sharing space, narcissistic problems in, 29–42

218

index

sibling dynamics: in couples psychotherapy group, 175–177 in psychotherapy group, 172 missing, 176 sibling relationships, in group analysis, 139 Sinclair, I., 117 skin, group, 176, 182 Skynner, R., 191 small groups, Klein’s thinking on, Bion’s application of, 150– 152 Snell, R., 168 so-called knowledge of other, and intrusive projections, 103 social atmosphere or climate, 169 social field of forces, 169 social group, couple in, love and hate of, 6 social identity, 186 social isolation, of couples, sadomasochistic, 20 social unconscious, 126 society, couple/pair in, 165–191 Sodré, I., 71, 82 soma-psychotic, 170 somatizing experiences, as psychotic defence against intimacy, 172 in group-analytic psychotherapy setting, 180–183 Sor, D., 166 space: mental: see mental space psychic, 30 sharing, 29, 31, 33 splitting, 3, 14, 19, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 79, 101 mechanism of, 148 primitive defence of, 43, 56 primitive defence mechanism of, 45 Sprince, J., xvii, 2, 3, 6, 145–164 Steiner, J., 75, 79, 99 Stewart, H., 95 Stone, D. K., 145 superego, 34 cruel, 19 ego-destructive, 168

perfectionistic and cruel, 19 primitive, 20 identification with, 4 projected, 13 sadistic, 14 superego functions, 20, 22 mutually projected, 24 Sweet, S., 152 swimming group, mother-and-baby pairs in, 172–174, 180 symbolic combined parental figure, internalization of, 174 symbolic thinking, difficulty with, 75 symbolization, 75, 76   Tabak de Bianchedi, E., 166 Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, 1, 80 Tavistock Clinic, ix, xv, 44, 173 therapeutic alliance, group, 125 therapeutic groups, 55 thick-skinned patients, clinical example, 35–38 think, capacity to, 4, 53, 70, 133 thinking, and enactment, clinical example, 76–78 thin-skinned patients, clinical example, 38–40 third position, 39, 64, 66, 73 Thomas, S., 31, 32 three-object relating/relationship, 6, 128, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142 difficulties in, 131–133 three-person relating/relationship, 3, 6, 107, 127, 128, 134, 137, 143 and two-person relating: see twoperson relating/relationship time: and boundaries, 20–24 reality of, 22 Torres, N., xvi, 3, 151, 166, 167, 169, 172, 186 transference(s), 5, 32, 40, 97, 169, 172, 177 in couple psychotherapy, 60–80 maintaining defensive equilibrium, clinical example, 63–64

index

multiple, 65, 129 in couple therapy, 4 in group psychotherapy, 129–130, 135–140 in “oedipal setting” of couple psychotherapy, 59–83 transference enactment, 66 transference level, group operating on, 129 transference syndromes, 38 transgenerational trauma, 122 trauma: conceptual remembered, 187 intergenerational transmission of, 188 pre-conceptual, 187 through social and political identity confusion, 187 transgenerational, 122 war, 191 intergenerational transmission of, 187, 190 treatment alliance, 129 triadic space, 69, 70, 75 in couple psychotherapy session, 66 triangular configuration of couple psychotherapy, 69, 74, 81 triangular relationship(s), 17, 39, 139, 140 love, stabilizing effects of, 19 triangular setting of couple psychotherapy, 65–70 and Oedipus, 65–70 triangular space, 6, 39 and couple and family dynamics, in group psychotherapy, 125–143 group, development and use of, 133–142 in relational life of group, 126 triangulation(s), 16–19 direct, 3, 16, 21 reverse, 3, 16, 17, 21 Trotter, W., 44, 166, 167 Tuckett, D., 80 Turner, T., 186 Turquet, P., 179, 186

219

twin(s): death of, 180 imaginary, 15, 177 longing for, 177 projective identification between, 179 psychic, separation of, 179 twinning: countertransference experience of, 177 transference experience of, 177 twinship, 14, 15, 172, 190 in groups, 3, 177–180 narcissistic, 23, 179 twinship relations: imaginary, 14 narcissistic gratification in, 15 two-generation relationship, 121 two-object relating/relationship, 127, 133, 138 and three-object relating, 128, 141 move to, 131, 137 two-person relating/relationship, 5, 6, 82, 143 in group, 3, 127–128 and three-person relating 3, 126–128, 134, 212 move to, 6, 143   Ulnik, J., 182 unconscious couple bond, 175 unconscious enactment(s), 26 of couple, 85–105 unconscious guilt, 15, 19, 20, 21 oedipal, 9, 10 unconscious oedipal ideals, 17 unconscious oedipal rivals, 17 unconscious phantasy(ies), 2, 3, 47, 56, 58, 105, 129, 169 shared, 96–98, 107, 175, 190 unconscious relations, couple’s, 85, 86, 96, 97, 98 and enactments, 85–105   Vincent, D., xviii, 3, 5, 6, 125–143   Waddell, M., ix–xi, xiii warring couple, 6, 147–156, 161–162

220

index

war trauma, 191 intergenerational transmission of, 187, 190 weaning, 110, 146, 148 Weber, M., 153 Williams, M. H., 23 Winnicott, D. W., 34, 48

wish-fulfilling fantasies, 15 Wolf Man, 46, 47, 49 Wordsworth, W., 37, 38 work group, 6, 53, 185 work-group function, of group, 125   xenophobia, 178