Psychoanalytic Models of the Mind for Couple and Family Therapy

Abstract

This paper describes an object relations theory of mind that highlights the interactive origin of psychic function and the beginnings of mental structure in the infant's relationships within the family group. Based on this model, psychoanalytic family and couple therapy employs the interactions between family and therapist to detect and work with developmental failures in holding and containment, skewed family projective identification, and attacks on linking, which characterize pathological and traumatized families. The coming together of transference generated by the family as a group and the therapist's countertransference are the fulcrum on which such therapy turns. An extended vignette of a session is used to illustrate the application of object relations theory to the therapeutic process of family therapy.