Holding and Containing a Couple Through Periods of High Intensity: What Holds the Therapist?

Abstract

Sessions with couples are often peppered with periods of high intensity as they bring conflicts and distress out in the open. These times are emotionally and psychologically challenging for the couple and the therapist potentially triggering defensiveness for all three in the room. The therapist's level of maturity plays a key role, along with clinical knowledge and technique in being able to manage these periods effectively in service of the couple. This paper explores what is required of the therapist in terms of reliability and attunement at times of intensity, and suggests that systemic practitioners have much to gain by leaning more in to the analytic skills of holding and containment to balance the cognitive strengths of systemic practice.1 Relationship counselling is complex, intricate work, often with a lot at stake for our clients. 2 Sessions are often peppered with periods of intensity, which represent important opportunities for constructive change. These require more of the therapist personally and professionally to manage them well. 3 A therapist's emotional and psychological maturity, as much as her clinical knowledge and technique, influences how she attunes to the couple and how she manages these times of intensity in sessions. 4 The analytic concepts of holding and containment offer systemic practitioners a way to understand the implicit, (unconscious) felt layers of the therapeutic alliance, in addition to the cognitive strengths of systemic practice. 5 The functions of holding and containment enable the establishment of a safe therapeutic space for the couple, particularly at times of intensity, and an inner holding for the therapist.Couple sessions are often peppered with heightened emotion, ambiguity, and conflicted communication. Arguably, these moments require more of the person of the therapist to see these periods through effectively in therapy. Couples, by right, expect a therapist who will not be overwhelmed, as they are, by the depth and intensity of their pain and distress. The intensity focused on here is not associated with abuse or domestic and family violence, which requires a 'safety first' response. Intense periods for the purposes of this paper are those with high levels of emotion and conflict that feel unmanageable to the couple, but are within a safe range of behaviours. Achieving this takes a significant level of emotional and psychological maturity as a therapist. Elisabeth Shaw (personal communication, January 20, 2014) offers a definition of emotional and psychological maturity to mean having the ability to tolerate the intensity and complexity of the couple dynamics, attune accurately enough to the couple,

Colliding Intersubjectivites: Transparency in Analytic Couple Therapy

“…It is heart‐warming to observe the productive growing confluence between psychoanalytic work and couple and family therapy that has been well described by authors such as Glasgow (), Flaskas (), and Larner (). Much of what they describe in their writings is very familiar to me as an analyst.…”

“…Likewise Glasgow () I believe speaks for contemporary couples and family therapists, in emphasising the need for couple and family therapists to deepen their capacity to be able to hold and contain couples and families, particularly, in a state of high emotional intensity. This recognises that if therapists are going to be effective in their ‘use of self’ without becoming defensive, they need to engage in more self‐understanding through therapy, as well as to pursue a better understanding of analytic concepts.…”

“…This experience of the coming together, of what appeared in the earlier years to be two diametrically opposing paradigms, is now not unique. The notion that analysts are working more systemically and relationally, and that couple therapists are turning to analytic ideas to enrich their work, is well addressed by Clulow (), Flaskas (, ), Glasgow (), and Larner (). These authors describe how contemporary family therapists and analysts share a common investment in core conceptual ideas such as constructionism; subjectivity and intersubjectivety; the capacity to tolerate doubt; the collaborative alliance; and the repetition compulsion.…”

The Narcissism of Minor Differences as Distance Regulators in Core Intimacy Problems

“…In my mind I work systemically , be it with an individual, a couple, or a family. I am encouraged to notice in the current literature a growing trend that reveals how analysts are working more systemically and relationally, and how couple and family therapists are turning to analytic ideas to enrich their work (Clulow, ; Flaskas, ; Glasgow, ; Israelstam, ; Larner, ).…”

“…This notion of use of countertransference, containing and mentally processing emotional tension from an outside third position, rather than intervening and interpreting, is central to analytic work (Bion, ). It is interesting to note that these techniques have also been taken up by contemporary couple and family therapists (Clulow, ; Flaskas, ; Glasgow, ; Israelstam, ; Larner, ).…”