Love Triangle in Marital Therapy

Abstract

The Allegory of Barbie, Ken, and GI Joe is a marital therapy intervention which reframes and normalizes gender differences between partners. Telling The Allegory seems to stimulate mutual trance induction for partners, and provides a context in which both partners can better understand and accept the profundity and naturalness of gender differences. Its uses include reduction of counter-therapeutic conflict and anxiety, enhancement of mutual empathy and sensitivity to gender-based experiential differences, and building therapeutic movement and/or intensity through accessing issues connected with childhood, both positive and negative. When used with appropriate timing and sensitivity, no contraindications have been identified.