Couples therapy as therapy: Fostering individual growth in conjoint contexts

ABSTRACT

This paper examines conjoint couples therapy as a treatment modality for fostering individual development. The central thesis is that self psychologically informed couples therapy—because it simultaneously offers both the therapist’s empathic immersion in each partner’s subjective world and the inevitable confrontation with the other partner’s differently organized subjectivity—offers a unique therapeutic experience that transcends the current dialectic in psychotherapy between provision and confrontation. After a brief introduction to intersubjective systems theory, the paper examines the individual’s experience in couples therapy. Disruptions and repairs of each partner’s narcissistic vulnerability can create new pathways for adult development. Two issues in individual development are then discussed in detail: the tendency of past experience, especially trauma, to dominate the present, and the difficulty partners have to recognize and tolerate alterity. Each issue offers the possibility of individual development within the couples therapy context. The paper concludes with a case example that demonstrates both partner’s mastering of vexing individual issues in a conjoint context.

KEYWORDS:

• Couples therapy
• individual development
• intersubjective systems
• partners with trauma histories
• tolerating alterity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Shaddock

David Shaddock PhD, MFT is the leader of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology Couples Therapy Interest Group and an associate editor of this journal. His most recent books include Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field and The Book of Splendor: New and Selected Poems on Spiritual Themes. He is a clinical supervisor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and adjunct faculty, Integrative Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Program, Chicago. He maintains a private practice in Berkeley. [email protected]