Working with Couples- Abstract

Didi Firman, Reunion conference

In this workshop we focused on several key psychosynthesis maps and their relationship to couple's therapy. Synthesis, presence, purpose and bi-focal vision were high on the list. So, not surprisingly were subpersonality work and family of origin (foo) work. This abstract will cover only a small portion of the workshop, by way of example.

For fun, we started with our own bestselling couple's book and each wrote our personal version of the top ten ways to keep your relationship alive and well. It didn't take long to find out that some of the key things on each list were also closely related to the key woundedness of that person (back to FOO and SUBS) We also looked at favorite and least favorite couples in movies, real life, books, etc. That gave us an idea of our ideal models and our potential counter-transference issues and gave us a personal model from which we could (and must) expand.

In an effort to be practical, we started from the assumption that the therapist must draw both members of the couple in (said the spider to the fly) in order to go anywhere and this is a special piece of work for the therapist, in learning to see both people in their soulfulness and woundedness. Because of the nature of polarity, as it happens in the couple, so it is likely to happen for the therapist that s/he unconsciously takes sides. Big no no. Thus the synthesis map is our ally here, allowing us to see polarities in their emergence towards unity or more inclusive levels of being. In that map, we can include even the most difficult behaviors as the distortions of a polarity and the most difficult couple interactions as those polarities fighting to right themselves. Classic family therapy talks about couples as overly enmeshed or overly differentiated. Both concepts fit neatly into the synthesis map; enmeshed, as a couple who have not claimed their "side"of the polarity and have merged as one (instead of two) beings, carrying half of themselves into that "compromise" or; overly-differentiated, as a couple so polarized that each carries and defends their side of the polarity against any possibility of synthesis.

The balancing and synthesis of opposites (Thank you Roberto for that phrase) requires that both members of the couple find autonomy, boundaries, a sense of themselves and their own truths and values and a most mature subpersonality from which to represent themselves. The therapist must, of course, be the holding environment in which both clients can let go of some defensiveness, find some safety and begin to have the experience of identifying with I, as they move both intrapsychically and interpersonally through their own core traumas, their subsequent subpersonality defenses, and their triggers with each other.

Easier said than done! And it is more difficult, in my experience, to create a healing environment for a couple than for an individual. I believe this is so, in part, because of the three person dynamic that makes it harder for each member of the couple to find safety, with both the therapist and their partner. Some ideas for helping to create that holding, healing environment, include the obvious things: letting both speak their minds; hearing each one in a soulful and compassionate way, helping each one to validate their own experience and to understand their own woundedness; and helping each one to see and hear their partner. Psychosynthesis offers us some specific ways to create this environment that are not common in family therapy (as I have known it). The first is purpose, meaning and values. Couples in distress are occasionally there because the two people find themselves at odds over their deepest purpose, meaning and values in life. This, however, in my 25 years of practice, is the exception to the rule. More often than not, couples come having lost track of their own and the couple's purpose. In the business and overload of their lives they have lost sight of why they are together, what is important to them, what visions they share. Or they have sacrificed many of their individual values, as well as hopes and dreams, in service of the couple–or family. Reclaiming both the individual values and the shared purpose can lift a weight from off the couple in such a way that the "prepersonal" work of inner child, family of origin, and primal wounding, can happen more gracefully, based in the faith and connection that the couple has rediscovered.

Of course this is an ideal model and one that does not always unfold gracefully—or at all. But our goal, I believe, at its most basic, is to offer the holding environment which allows the possibility of seeing and being seen to emerge.

With so much more that we covered, and that could be covered if we were to go further, I'll simply mention a few playful "strategies" that we considered. First is the power play. That's an invitation for the therapist to be strong enough to hold both people, even when they may be acting out. This is the strong will. Another strategy is taming the FOO. For this we hope to help each partner see the other in the context of their childhood and the wounding that they suffered. Each partner is, ideally, learning to access parent, adult and child ego states (Transactional Analysis) or subpersonalities in complimentary ways with their partners. And the last strategy is softening. This involves helping the couple soften into each other's ways of being, by learning to express and receive the vulnerability that each has.

In all this work, as we are able to honor and respect bi-focally, both the soulfulness and hurt of our clients, we hope that they will learn to do the same for themselves and their partners—and of course all other beings.

May we all know peace. Didi Firman