The key in marital negative cycles is “the picture of the other” as “the bad object”… the view of the other as essentially bad, rather than as a whole object, which is a more realistic picture of the other as having a mix of good and bad qualities. In order for the couple to heal, it essential to moderate this pattern of all bad projection from each partner onto the other.
The view advocated here is that we get at this dynamic both through an unpacking of the negative cycle as it repeats in the actual couples sessions (with both partners present)… and through individual sessions where we explore each partners interior psychology that sets them up for the “all bad” blaming of the the other. It is this combined approach that offers the fullest marital repair. This combined work also leaves the couple with their own resources for emotional repair long after the couples therapy has ended.
The individual meetings are especially important because they enable an opening of deep underlying attitudes in the marriage that can remain unclear in the actual couples sessions. The concern here is that it is quite possible to have powerful healing moments in the couple’s sessions… only to have them not sustained after the session because of underlying attitudes of disbelief on the part of both partners. In this vein, couples can have really good moments in the couples sessions, only to not hold onto these better moments because of unspoken interior disbelief maintained outside of the sessions.
Elaborate this point further around the theme of vulnerability.
