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The self in the couple

relationship: part 1
JAN GRANT AND JIM CRAWLEY

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the importance of the ‘good-

enough’ development of the core self in the couple relationship. It
argues that difŽculties in the development of the self lie behind a
signiŽcant number of troubled couple relationships. Part 1 focuses on
individual psychotherapy and how changes to the core self are often
attended by shifts in the marital relationship. It traces how this occurs
through clinical material and analyses what kinds of changes to the
self are needed for the couple relationship to function well.
Psychodynamic theory is used to understand the core changes over
time and how these are related to signiŽcant second-order change in
the couple relationship. The construct of the ‘transitional space’ is
used to theorize the couple relationship. Implications for the practice
of individual psychotherapy are discussed. In Part 2, the signiŽcance
of change in the experience of the self of one or both partners for a
successful outcome of couples therapy is discussed, along with the
place of work with individual partner(s) in the course of conjoint
couples therapy.

KEYWORDS Couples therapy, marital therapy, psychodynamic

counselling, conjoint and individual therapy, self-psychology, object
relations

Psychodynamic Counselling
ISSN 1353-3339 print/ISSN 1470-1057 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13533330110087705
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INTRODUCTION
Disturbed and difŽcult relationships are one of the most commonly
reported reasons why individuals decide to engage in psychotherapy
(Donovan 1998). The couple relationship is a particularly intense site
of expectation, emotion, fantasy and projection. Part of what gives
the committed couple relationship its uniqueness is that it provides
the possibility of a continuing space where the internal subjective
worlds of the two individual partners meet, and where each must
encounter, engage with and accommodate to aspects of their exter-
nal world. Borrowing from Winnicott the notion of the ‘transitional
space’ may be helpful in making this point. Adam Phillips (1988)
describes how Winnicott saw the space between analyst and patient
as a transitional space where
desire crystallised; the fantasised wish to merge with or annihilate the
object was an attempt to pre-empt the space, and a capacity to mourn
the object constituted the space as real. But this space was also used
by children to play in. Children’s play was not only the child’s more
or less disguised representation of a craving for the object, but also
the child’s Žnding and becoming a self. The transitional space in which
the child plays, or the adult talks, is, in Winnicott’s view, ‘an inter-
mediate area of experiencing to which inner reality and external life
both contribute’, and it exists as ‘a resting-place for the individual
engaged in the perpetual task of keeping inner and outer reality sepa-
rate yet inter-related’. Transitional space breaks down when either
inner or outer reality begins to dominate the scene, just as conversa-
tion stops if one of the participants takes over.
(Phillips 1988: 118–19)
Transitional space for the couple, then, is that place where the inner
and outer realities of each partner are allowed to coexist, to the
extent that there can be reection and dialogue about each partner’s
internal experience of self and other. For this to occur, each indi-
vidual needs to have achieved a ‘good-enough’ development of the
self to engage in this complex dance of intimacy. The frequent (often-
gendered) complaints that ‘he never talks about his feelings’ or ‘she
doesn’t understand what it’s like for me’ are signs that the transi-
tional space is constricted. Both individual and couples therapy can
help to expand and transform the transitional space of the couple.
Couples therapy focuses directly on the relationship between two
people, while individual therapy is oriented towards change in the
individual’s inner world. Yet, both may be highly effective in
changing the couple relationship. Why is this so and what processes
are helpful in engendering such change?
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We would argue that, for signiŽcant second-order change to occur

in the couple relationship, there must be change to individual selves.
For such change to occur, it is essential that the couples therapist is
able to operate both systemically and individually; likewise, it is
important that the therapist engaged in individual psychotherapy is
able to address both intrapsychic and systemic levels. Part 1 of this
paper discusses how individual psychotherapy can be central in inu-
encing how the client engages in their intimate relationships and
how we can best theorize and work with the relational realm in our
clients. Part 2 focuses on couples therapy and the kinds of changes
to individual selves that are needed for the couple to have a more
satisfying relationship. Both parts of the paper draw on some of the
relational psychoanalytic theories – particularly attachment theory,
object-relations theory and self psychology – to help to make sense
of the processes of change that occur in the ‘self’ and their impact
on the couple relationship.
It has been argued that psychodynamic psychotherapy is more
effective in inuencing changes in interpersonal relationships than in
shifting entrenched characterological patterns (Hollender and Ford
1990). Many clients report that the major change in their life after
successful therapy is the improved quality of their interpersonal rela-
tionships. This is partially because the therapeutic situation is a living
laboratory where therapist and client can together investigate the
client’s patterns and capacities in relating to others (Jacobs 1998).
Since psychotherapy is built so Žrmly on the foundation of an inter-
personal relationship, it can be a powerful tool in processing
disturbances in human relationships.
In psychoanalytic theorizing and practice, there has been a shift in
the last decade towards integration of the important insights of the
relational theorists such as Bowlby, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Sullivan
(Holmes 1998; Mitchell 1999). Such theorists have contributed to
our understanding of how early experiences with emotionally signiŽ-
cant Žgures are played out in subsequent relationships, including the
relationship with the therapist. This focus engenders a much richer
analysis of how changes in the ‘self’ produce changes in signiŽcant
relationships, including marital ones. It also brings more to the fore-
ground the ‘system’ of relationships in which the client is situated and
alerts us to the need to focus also on such present-day relationships.
Many of the themes explored in psychodynamic counselling assist
clients to gain a good understanding of their own relationships and
how they may want to change them. For example, the exploration
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of themes related to anger, aggressiveness and assertion, passivity and

dependence, intimacy and emotional warmth, attachment and isola-
tion all assist in gaining a better grasp of how one functions in close
relationships. The relationship with the therapist, which is such a
focus in psychodynamic psychotherapy, provides extensive illumina-
tion of the client’s core relationship patterns.

PRACTICE: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF INDIVIDUAL

PSYCHOTHERAPY
We will consider a case of individual psychodynamic psychotherapy to
illuminate how changes in the subjective experience of the self can
lead to a change in the experience of ‘self-in-relationship’, and thus
to shifts in the couple relationship. We are arguing that such individ-
ual changes in one partner can lead to the establishment or restora-
tion of the transitional space for the couple, which in turn makes the
relationship a richer and more satisfying place for both to be.
Whereas the primary focus in couples work is changes in the relat-
edness between two people, the focus in individual psychotherapy is
on shifts in intrapsychic function (Gerson 1996). If we take seriously
the earlier argument that, for the couple to change, there must be
change in the individual selves, then it is likely that signiŽcant changes
in an individual will also lead to signiŽcant changes in the couple
relationship of that individual. Tracking how this occurs in individual
therapy is important for three reasons: 1) to make the process
transparent; 2) to illuminate the kinds of changes to self that are
needed to fully engage in an intimate relationship; 3) to show clearly
the links between change to the core self and changes in the couple
relationship.

The client developmental history

Angela, a 50-year-old public relations consultant, came into therapy
(with Jan Grant) to deal with issues of low self-esteem, distance in
her attachments to others, feelings of emptiness and loneliness and
moderate levels of depression and anxiety. Although highly func-
tioning as a professional and in a long-term committed relationship,
these had been long-standing problems for her. Her mother’s death
eight months previously exacerbated these issues.
Angela had been married for twenty-eight years but had been
unable to have children. She grew up in the UK; her father had left
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the marriage less than a year after she was born, and her mother had
worked as a nurse from that point on to support the two of them.
She had virtually no contact with her father during her childhood
and still experienced his abandonment as a deep wound. Early in
therapy, she said there was a voice inside her saying ‘I’m not anybody,
I’m not worthy, I’m not important’ and that this was the voice from
her dad that had been ‘like sand in an oyster all these years’.
Her mother was a very practical, capable woman who was highly
regarded by those around her. Angela was full of admiration for her
mother’s independence and capacity to cope in such difŽcult circum-
stances and knew that her mother was Žercely attached to her.
However, her mother was prone to unpredictable rages that fright-
ened Angela; she described her mother as turning into someone she
did not know, with bulging eyes, long hair swinging around her
head, irrational and screaming at her. These rages could occur on a
daily basis when her mother was stressed. She was also self-absorbed
and Angela felt that she had needed to look after her mother’s
emotional needs from a very young age.
Although her mother remarried when Angela was about 9 and
had two more children, this marriage also failed. Angela left home
at 17 to work, met and married her husband at 20, and emigrated
to Australia. Her mother cried non-stop when she left and moved
into Angela’s old bedroom. In Angela’s words, ‘I was all that she
had especially since she was an orphan. I was her world.’ Her mother
followed her to Australia some years later, as did her two step-
brothers. Angela took a very active role in looking after her mother,
who was exceedingly demanding and critical, in the years before she
died.
Angela was in weekly, then fortnightly and at the end monthly
psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy for almost six years. We
addressed numerous concerns and issues over that time, and termi-
nated therapy when she was feeling more solid internally, more
closely connected to others, and more able to give expression to
her ‘real’ self. Naturally the anxiety and depression faded as these
events occurred. We want to concentrate on only one aspect of the
extended and complex work together – the impact of her individual
psychotherapy on her relationship with her husband. We have organ-
ized the discussion under four themes of emerging change in the
self.

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Differentiation of self and the sense of entitlement in

relationships
When Angela began therapy she described her relationship with her
husband: ‘He’s the captain and I’m the crew. . . . I want to be more
equal to him and less like a pathetic approval-seeking child. . . . I felt
in charge of myself before I got married – and then I just gave up’.
As we explored the events that had led to very insecure attachments
to both mother and father, Angela began to get a sense of where
her feelings about lack of entitlement in her marriage had originated
and how much she experienced her husband as she had her domi-
nating mother. This work led her to develop a growing capacity for
self-assertion and a sense of entitlement as an equal partner in the
relationship.
About a year after starting therapy, Angela started to report ‘rows
which are very unusual for us’, largely brought about by her
increasing assertiveness about her needs and wants in the relation-
ship. This was uncomfortable for her, and she worried about the
impact on her marriage and whether her husband would adjust to
the changes or abandon her, yet, with the support of therapy, she
did not retreat to the less differentiated position.
Part of this work on the ‘self’ was around issues to do with differ-
entiation. For example, Angela would often ask my advice about her
life. In the early stages of therapy, I redirected these questions back
to her. However, it was indicative of her pattern in other relation-
ships, so I eventually raised this transferential issue with her in the
middle stages of therapy:
C: Have you got any ideas what to do about that?
Th: I wonder if what’s going on between you and me right now has
to do with giving up your authority to me – the way you do with
your husband and the way you did with your mother?
C: (Crying) I went for so many years without asking advice. This is
positive, like saying I’m lost, can you help me?
Th: Yes, okay, I hear the sadness behind that – the lonely child who
had no one to turn to, to ask advice from. But, I also wonder if it’s
important for you to become somewhat more of an authority on your
own life rather than entrusting it to others.
C: It’s so sad I don’t know what I want. You are right – I do need
to learn to look after me. I am changing somewhat – I don’t hang
on Roger’s every word now. I’m not so alert to his every move.

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Angela, who never missed a session, ‘forgot’ to attend her next

session. In the subsequent session, with a great deal of encourage-
ment on my part, she was able to express her disturbance over the
above interaction and to voice her disquiet with me. Pine (1990),
in line with the relational psychoanalysts, argues that what is ‘new
and corrective’ is that the client can continually rediscover through
the analysis of errors and empathic failures that the therapist remains
concerned, well-intentioned and, in Angela’s case, still present. This
was an important turning point for her to ‘test’ the strength of the
attachment with me and to experience that we could process these
disruptions and understand them, and that I would not abandon or
annihilate her if she was upset or angry with me. Indeed we could
both survive her negative feelings – something that she had never
been able to feel with her mother. Ehrenberg argues that true insight
and change comes as the result of ‘new experience in the lived inter-
action’ (1992: 23), and that what is signiŽcant is not what has
happened before, but what has never happened before.
Some two months after these sessions Angela reported she had
experienced the best holiday she had ever had with her husband. She
Žrmly told him that she was not going to put up with him being
bossy, controlling or critical towards her on the holiday – that she
was an adult and capable of determining what she did. He accepted
this and she experienced quite a bit of softening in him. They were
able to get very close – closer than she had ever felt before towards
him, and she could experience a deepening in her connection to him.
She also recognized in subsequent sessions that, when he was
controlling, she had the same reaction in her body to him as she
had towards her mother.
Several months later we worked again on the issue of differentia-
tion:
C: It may sound stupid but I’ve never had to worry about money
before and now I’m really worried.
Th: I notice you refer to your feelings as stupid, do you think that I
might feel that such concerns are stupid or childish, the way your
mother thought your concerns were?
C: Well yes – but it’s not affecting your life, but it is mine. But, this
is what I’m upset about, so that’s OK.
Th: So it’s OK to have a different view and different feelings from
what you think mine might be?
C: Yes. Yes it is! Because this is my life – not yours.
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Near the end of therapy this increasing sense of differentiation

expressed itself in being able to pursue interests of her own – even
when her husband was disapproving or was not willing to join her
in them. She also decided she really wanted to travel back to the
UK, and would go with or without Roger, who was not such a keen
traveller.

The initiating self and secure attachment

Central to Bowlby’s (1988) theory on attachment is the notion that
secure attachment enables the child to explore the external world
because there is a safe base to return to. Angela’s attachment to her
mother was powerful but fearful-avoidant. Two years into therapy,
she began to remember and re-process her mother’s rages. As a child
she had frequent fainting/dizzy episodes. This was replayed in the
present through anxiety attacks, where she felt waves of panic without
knowing what was frightening. In exploration of these feelings, it
became clear that they were linked to her fears of abandonment,
which she described as ‘being like I am held over an abyss by a
thread’, as well as to feeling small and helpless in the face of her
mother’s violent rages. ‘It was like living on a volcano.’ She said
that, as a child, she had no one that she could feel safe with – no
one to whom she could take her problems. Kohut (1977) helps us
to understand how the client’s experience of feeling ‘mirrored’ can
in part help to compensate for the experiences in childhood that
have produced a lack of esteem and sense of well-being. He also
helps us understand the need for signiŽcant others who can be
depended on and ‘idealized’ before a sense of safety and internal
cohesion can occur.
Angela’s mother was extremely dominant, leaving little space for
the emergence of Angela’s own desires and individuality. She became
very compliant, although at times used to stop eating, saying, ‘It
was the only thing my mother couldn’t force me to do’. There was
little responsiveness to Angela’s achievements – little nourishment of
what Kohut calls healthy narcissism. She felt dominated by her
mother’s need to the extent that it felt that ‘my mother annihilated
my will’.
Mitchell suggests that secure attachment also provides the base to
explore the internal world of ‘personal preferences, desires, and
impulses – what Winnicott called spontaneous gestures. When the
safety that a dependable attachment Žgure provides is missing, the
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child herself tends to precociously Žll in the missing parental func-

tion (Winnicott’s “caretaker self”) and opportunities for a worry-free
surrender to one’s own experience is foreclosed’ (1999: 97). When
Angela was 6 years old she took up tap-dancing lessons which she
adored. This was her Žrst memory of being able to pursue some-
thing she really wanted to do. However, she was expected to set her
alarm and remember for herself on Saturdays to get up and get ready
for the lessons. In the cold dark days of winter, she forgot twice to
do so, and her mother cancelled her lessons. She was bitterly disap-
pointed as she had loved dancing and was good at it. It is perhaps
not surprising, then, that in adulthood Angela had not known how
to choose activities for herself which were satisfying. She often asked
me, ‘How do other people know what they like doing?’
After considerable work together on these early events, Angela
reported an extremely rare feeling for her, where she felt very happy
and contented inside: in her words, ‘I was soaking up the pleasure.
Everything was just right as it was, and I felt a part of it like I had a
place in it.’ At this time she also started to express an interest in greater
intimacy with her husband. ‘I want him to see me and would like to
really see him. I’m saying what I want more and more, but now I want
to be closer.’ As Angela grew towards greater self-activation, there was
also more of a ‘self’ to connect to her husband with and a greater
desire for him to know that self.

The archaic self and attachment to abandoning or rejecting

objects
About one year after beginning therapy, Angela reported the devel-
opment of a close friendship with a male work colleague. Her interest
in Michael was clearly an attachment that had strong elements of
Kohut’s ‘idealizing transference’; this was someone who could be
father-like for her. In her words, ‘He’s very protective and a really
good provider for his child – the opposite to my dad. I like seeing
the picture of him and his son. He is very gentle and supportive,
kind, benevolent.’ In subsequent months, he pursued a sexual rela-
tionship with her, which she resisted, opting for an intimate but
secret friendship.
Old abandonment issues were reactivated on several occasions
when Michael did not call for several weeks. Angela viewed these
incidents as deliberate attempts to hurt her and reject her; she had
internalized her mother’s version of the rejecting father. Indeed,
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during therapy, images of Michael and her father were interspersed

and she began to allow herself to experience the full grief of her
father’s abandonment. Working through these smaller ‘abandon-
ments’ in the present allowed Angela to process the larger
abandonment of her father. She began to make connections between
her dad and Michael – that they were both salesmen, fun, artistic,
good dressers, womanizers and boozers.
During her third year in therapy, Angela involved herself sexually
in the relationship with Michael. She had started to experience her
husband again as a steely, stern dominating Žgure who showed
displeasure. In many ways, it was the yearning for the transitional
space of self and other that fuelled the affair. Although I felt
concerned for her emotionally through this affair, I worked hard to
maintain neutrality about her decisions. The sexualizing of the rela-
tionship, however, was relatively short-lived. Some four months later
they had a vigorous and somewhat rough sexual encounter where
Angela felt used and abused. She was extremely angry, and was able
to use her anger to end the relationship. This event was the culmi-
nation of her work on her father – in her words, ‘I decided that I
was not an abandoned child any more, I’m not 3 years old any more.’
She was not only able to end the destructive relationship, she was
able to move past the idealization and to tell him clearly what she
thought and felt about the whole encounter. From this point on in
therapy there was virtually no focus on her father’s abandonment,
and her relationship with her husband steadily improved.
In psychodynamic theory, early experiences are thought to be
repeated in order to gain mastery over a disturbing relationship, and
also because repetition is an effort towards gratiŽcation. The thera-
peutic task is to assist the client to move past the old drama of his-
torically based object relations (Pine 1990). The interpretation of this
relationship as a repetition of her relationship with her father assisted
Angela to understand more deeply her own inner processes and to
use that insight in the project of change. This change in her rela-
tionship-with-self also enabled her to move past her fear of abandon-
ment with her husband and further into trying to create a ‘transitional
space’ with him where both their inner worlds could be shared.

The real self and depth of attachment to others

Angela often spoke about her difŽculty in experiencing any depth of
attachment to others. In her relationship with her husband, she had
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been unable to access much of her real self and this impeded her
ability to attach fully and love him more deeply.
Almost four years into therapy, when he had a series of health
problems, Angela became more aware of her husband’s vulnerability.
However, she was able to feel tenderness and compassion rather than
fear of his ageing. By this point in therapy, she felt stronger inter-
nally and did not need him so much to be the strong powerful other
she could lean on. Her compassion for her own self as a child through
the therapy helped her to feel compassion and love for her husband.
She became aware of great depth in her attachment to him. The
false self (Winnicott) for Angela of the compliant, pleasing, scared
child was giving way to the emergence of a ‘real’ self who could
truly connect with another person at deeper levels.
Part of the work in accessing this real self was the development
of awareness around her mother’s bottomless pit of neediness and
the impact of that on Angela never feeling ‘enough’. This led her
to distance herself in her relationships because she never felt she
could be enough for the other. Masterson (1981, 1985) is helpful
here when he talks about the need to avoid identifying and acti-
vating individuating thoughts and wishes in order to defend against
the abandonment depression that such activation would trigger. The
false adaptation of the self to others’ needs occurs in order to avoid
an abandonment depression.
C: I remember this feeling of despair I had of her not being satisŽed
– I feel like I was as adequate as I could be under the circumstances.
Th: Angela – is it something about not being enough for her, a sense
of not being big enough?
C: Yes it was very weighty, this responsibility to almost breathe for
her – for her emotional well-being. It’s hard to wear that – like a big
hand on our shoulder. I used to worry because she was so lonely
inside. She was lonely inside like I used to be. I found it all very
demanding. (Softly crying) I could never quite make her feel whole
– I couldn’t repair the hurt that had been done to her. No matter
what you did for her, within a day, it was like you hadn’t done
anything. I wish I’d been able to make her happy, but I wasn’t enough.
Soon after this session, Angela reported that her relationship with
her husband was improving and that there was a comfortableness
and security there that she had not felt for many years. Opening up
to the depth of her feeling for her mother, both negative and posi-
tive, allowed more of a real opening in her relationship with her
husband. As she accessed deeper levels of her self individually, she
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was able to access these with her partner. Yet questions about her
self-in-relationship still remained. Five months after the session
reported above, Angela was re-working the same material in her own
marriage:
C: I think I was a friendly, cheerful, not too demanding woman who
was really supportive for Roger.
Th: As you think about that in relation to yourself, how do you feel?
C: Well it sounds like a puppy! He felt comfortable with me and he
didn’t want anyone to control him. He was educated and I wasn’t –
he went out with far more intellectual girls. I wonder if that’s all there
is in me – I’m not enough as a person; I’m not deep enough.
Th: Yet here you are plumbing your own depths.
C: Well I don’t feel right about it. I sort of feel shallow.
Th: It seems as if you’re talking about your difŽculty in accessing this
kind of depth you have in this room – with me – in your relation-
ships out there.
C: I don’t know – maybe I’d like to be adventurous and do more
things with Roger – like go scuba diving.
Th: So perhaps you are ready to begin to take the risk of ‘diving
deeper’ with your husband.
The other aspect of accessing the real self in relationship to others
was the healing of the ‘splitting’ in Angela’s intrapsychic world. Her
mother was experienced as either all bad or all good in various points
in the therapy, and this was projected out onto her relationship with
her husband in the present. Close to the end of therapy this re-
working could be seen in relationship with her husband. Angela
reported an increasing tenderness in her relationship with Roger and
how time with him seemed very precious. There was an increasing
sense of contentment in the marriage and many deeper, loving feel-
ings toward her husband. As she moved through her anger at her
mother, she was able to see the good things her mother had given
her and in turn was able to begin to experience and appreciate the
good things Roger was giving her. She was also able to experience
much greater pleasure in everyday things, and moments of delight
and joy. Near termination, Angela reported great satisfaction with
her marriage, and two years later, at follow-up, she reported that her
relationship with Roger was better than it had ever been – full of
closeness, warmth and companionship.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE OF INDIVIDUAL

THERAPY
Individual psychotherapy, in Angela’s case, had a signiŽcant and
highly positive impact on her marriage. The changes in her ‘self’ led
to considerable and long-lasting changes in the couple relationship.
We are not arguing that such changes always lead to an improve-
ment in the marriage; for some, changes in the ‘self’ lead to leaving
unsatisfying or abusive relationships, or the partner is not able to
tolerate the changes and the marriage disintegrates. Deep and real
changes in the ‘self’ will in themselves inevitably inuence the couple
relationship in profound ways; we are arguing that, when the rela-
tionship can tolerate such change, the ‘transitional space’ will be
expanded for the couple.
By way of discussion, we wish to make three points.
1 The nature of the couple relationship as a ‘transitional space’
requires that the process of change take account of the need for
one or both partners to be able to change in terms of their
subjective sense of self if there is to be lasting second-order
change in the pattern of their relationship.
2 Individual therapy can lead to signiŽcant development in the self
of one partner, which means that their capacity to establish or
engage in the ‘transitional space’ is expanded; this, in turn,
creates the potential for substantial second-order change in the
couple relationship.
3 Such changes to the couple relationship can be produced in indi-
vidual psychotherapy through changes in self-experience,
particularly in areas such as differentiation of self, self-entitle-
ment, self-activation, accessing the ‘real’ self and repair of the
archaic self-experiences. These have an impact on the capacity
for autonomy and intimacy – self-functions which are essen-
tial to the capacity to participate in an expanded ‘transitional
space’.

CONCLUSION
Holmes argues that the therapeutic relationship, like a couple rela-
tionship, is based on an attachment bond:
In the language of attachment theory, the aim of psychotherapy is to
help create a secure base within which the patient can begin to face and
‘narrativise’ past pain, and, through the relationship with the therapist,
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learn the rudiments of intimacy and autonomy. A secure base arises out
of the responsiveness and attunement provided by the therapist.
(Holmes 1998: 236–7)
We would argue that he is talking about the creation of the ‘transi-
tional space’ in therapy. The experience of such a ‘transitional space’
in psychotherapy leads to the desire and capacity to create and ‘live
in’ such a space in other signiŽcant relationships.
If the couple relationship is seen as a transitional space between
two subjectively experienced selves and the external world of objects,
then lasting, second-order change in the couple relationship will be
dependent upon a move to a more cohesive and differentiated self
by each partner. This will, inevitably, lead to changes in the ways in
which they engage with each other; and, hopefully, to their experi-
encing the relationship as more fulŽlling. Alternatively it may lead
to a clear realization that one or both partner’s goals for the rela-
tionship are not realizable, and to a capacity to act on this realization.

Dr Jan Grant, Associate Professor, Co-ordinator, Master of Psychology

(Counselling), Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U 1987,
Perth, Western Australia 6845
Jim Crawley, Senior Lecturer, Co-ordinator, Master of Social Science
(Counselling), Edith Cowan University, 100 Joondalup Drive,
Joondalup, Western Australia 6027

NOTE
This paper is a revised version of a presentation delivered at the Žrst
Australian Psychotherapy Conference, Melbourne, 1999.

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