Wounded by reality: emotional deprivation and unresolved trauma in psychoanalytical couple’s therapy

Abstract

In this article, I will focus on highly conflictual couples with extensive emotional deprivation and unresolved trauma, which prevents them from developing healthy romantic relationships and overcoming the challenges entailed in any intimate attachment. I will describe how everyday interactions are experienced as threatening or even lethal movements between the partners. The question which arises in the psychoanalytical therapeutic process is how to help the couple tolerate the sensory reminders of the unresolved trauma as a necessary precursor to any process of symbolisation. In order to provide a safe enough therapeutic attachment bond, extensive time is dedicated to the emotional experience of self and the other in the here-and-now of the session, which validates the emotional experience of the couple as well as contains it. The therapy focuses on the transferential and countertransferential movements inspired by the matrix of the victim, abuser, and uninvolved witness (Davies & Frawley, 1994) to elaborate the intertwining of the unresolved trauma with the couple’s form of attachment. In order to illustrate my argument, I present two examples: one from a fictional narration and another from my clinical work.