Individual Therapy, Healthy Relationships

When speaking about anything that has to do with the two of you, I want you to look at and talk to each other. It’s my job to interrupt and help you change your communication patterns, but I can do that best if I watch you communicate with each other.” Even after this instruction, couples often keep turning to the interviewer to make statements such as: “I just don’t know how to tell if he is interested in talking with me. I come home and he says hello, but he doesn’t initiate conversation and I just feel so alone.” In a communications model, the interviewer intervention often consists of: “I’d like you to turn to Barney and restate what you said, only this time, talk to him.” An underlying assumption of this model is that it is more important for Betty and Barney to learn to communicate effectively with each other than it is for them to learn to communicate effectively with the interviewer .

In contrast, psychoanalytic or object relations couple therapists formulate relationship problems in terms of individual psychopathology. Consequently, they may not even view conjoint couples therapy as an appropriate treatment modality for addressing con?ict. For example, Strean states, “In most instances, but far from all, the psychodynamically oriented therapist has favored individual long term therapy for the treatment of marital con?ict” . Therefore, strange as it may sound, some psychoanalytically oriented clinicians view couple therapy as of little use. Instead, they believe that psychologically healthy relationships are based on psychologically healthy individuals. Therefore, the treatment of choice is individual therapy.