Ferroelectric KDP is best described through an Ising Hamiltonian in a transverse field, coupled linearly to the phonon system. The soft optical mode is coupled to the order parameter, whereas the dependence of the transition temperature on deuteration follows from the coupling of the tunneling frequency to another optical branch. After unitary transformations of the Hamiltonian, in which parts of the phonon coupling are dealt with, an analytic upper bound for the free energy of the KDP system is found using Bogoliubov's inequality. This allows a choice from the class of different canonical transformations of that one leading to the lowest free energy bound. Then, in a mean field approximation, the effective coupling constant is found to be a solution of an implicit analytic function, which is solved numerically for different coupling strengths. In the ferroelectric region a strong temperature dependence of the effective coupling is found; crossing into the paraelectric region, its value changes smoothly for weak and abruptly for medium coupling strengths. These results parallel the behavior found in phonon coupled exciton systems.