Unconscious relationship beliefs in couples and family therapy
Slavoj Titl, Lucie Lucká
IFP-State-of-the-Art-Symposium 30.4. - 2.5.21
I would like to share with you a few ideas that we apply at the Institute of Psychoanalytic Couples and Family Therapy (IPPART), primarily the concept of unconscious relationship beliefs. This concept has proved to be very useful in our work with couples and families, helping us to better understand why certain people are attracted to each other; why other two people never start living together, even though they can have great sex; why, after a certain period of living together, some people start to have disputes and eventually break up, or vice versa, why some couples stay together despite suffering, arguing, attacking and destroying each others life. What is it, then, the mysterious “chemistry of love”? Similar questions are asked by our clients.
I shall try to address this issue, even if I speak somewhat more broadly at first.
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At the Institute of Psychoanalytic Couples and Family Therapy, we consider it important to learn from a range of psychoanalytic theories. We believe that each psychoanalytic theory provides a different advantage in understanding the problems of couples and families, thus helping us to look at the issue of the couple, or the family from different perspectives.
Freud’s theory helped us to understand the intrapsychic functioning of the individual mind, but it was difficult to apply it to understand problems in relations. Margaret Mahler’s developmental theory (and others’ such as René Spitz’s) drew attention to the importance of relationships (mainly the mother-child relationship) for the development of identity in the separation-individuation process, the importance of so-called object constancy, as a precondition for the successful experience of the Oedipal stage. Ego psychology emphasised the early developmental phases of the ego and preoedipal development, while also providing an understanding of preoedipal, so-called functional relationships, often encountered in couples and family therapy.
Heinz Kohut and other self analysts taught us about the catastrophic effects of microtraumatisation in the form of lack of empathy. Basic forms of narcissistic transference – idealising, mirroring and twin transference – can often be seen in couples and families therapy. Various object relations theories, brought about by the development of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom, have proved extremely fruitful for the psychoanalysis of couples and families. Bowlby’s attachment theory, and especially its elaboration by his followers, enabled a new understanding of the importance of early attachment formulas in building adult relationships. Klein’s approach to early pathology, splitting, understanding infantile phantasies, envy, jealousy etc. was not only important for individual psychoanalysis, but also provided an understanding of the many phenomena we see in couples and family relationships. For us couples therapists, however, perhaps the most important thing was the recognition of projective identification, which as a very early way of communication and influencing relationships applies when choosing a partner, the elimination of unbearable and unacceptable affects by projecting them onto a partner where they can be controlled or annihilated. Winnicott drew our attention to the importance of holding in therapy, the importance of transitional objects and transitional object relationships, and the conditions for the creation of the false Self vs. true Self.
Bion opened up a new perspective on therapy with his concept of container, alpha and beta function, and other ideas about the patient-analyst relationship and therapy. It turned out that his ideas could be very well applied to couples and family therapy. We started talking about a paired container, a family container, an unbalanced container, a container for transgenerational material, etc. The wide range of Bion’s useful ideas is beyond the scope of this paper.
Intersubjectivists alerted us to the unconscious experience of INTER. What arises between us, whether we are a patient and a therapist, or partners, friends, parents and children, colleagues at work, etc. We at IPPART believe that work with intersubjective reality should be the main goal of couples and/or family therapy. This means helping the couple or family to understand the unconscious that is co-created by both partners. The unconscious that can either unite people or divide them. This can be understood as a link (vinculo), but also in other ways for instance field theory.
In couples and family therapy, the therapist is confronted with a large number of externalised and acted out conflicts and has to resolve them in a relatively very limited time (compared to individual psychoanalysis). The couples or family therapist is constantly drawn into coalitions and, through the process of projective identification, into unconscious communication and acting out, being subjected to pressure by manipulation. In addition, there are at least two people and a therapist (sometimes a therapeutic couple) in the consultation room and each of them should have the opportunity to voice their respective opinions. Each of them should be able to get an empathic response from the therapist and his or her containment. But it is also important that the therapist provides container to the specific link (vinculo) of this particular relationship. Perhaps we could say to the intersubjective third, which is neither wife nor husband, but something between them. Such conditions place great demands on a therapist’s ability to hold boundaries and work with transference and countertransference, but also on his ability to think, dream, and hypothesise. Somewhat radically speaking, therapy arises in the mind of a therapist, with the help of his theories. In our opinion, various theories illuminate the extremely complex issue of couples and family relationships from various advantageous points of view. We do not see them as competing, but rather as complementary and enriching our overall understanding of our clients. At times, we probably all work by helping either partner to mentalise, to support the maturation of his ego functions, to support his separation-individuation process, to allow insight into internalised object relationships and their projection, to gain insight into repetition, or acting out, to allow better mutual containment, to help overcome the client’s inhibitions and thus to facilitate the development of self-reflection and at least around those aspects which allow the clients to work on their relationship at the end of therapy without our help. The goal of couples therapy, however, is to help with the intersubjective connection of the relationship. With what is created BETWEEN them and what maintains a specific relationship of the couple, or family, or sometimes even a non-relationship. What connects partners (or a family as a whole, but also a therapeutic group, or working groups). Our experience has led us to believe that couples are united by an unconscious phantasy about the nature of relationships, love and sex. “Phantasy” which we call “unconscious relationship belief”. Both partners agree on this belief, even if they sometimes act in seemingly opposite ways (e.g. a teetotaller and an alcoholic).
In our work we build primarily on 3 sources. The first is the theory of the link, (vinculo) as developed by Isidoro Berenstein (2005, 2010), who followed the Spanish and French psychoanalytic tradition, mainly the ideas of René Kaes as well as those of André Rufiot and Didier Anzieu.
Secondly, we build on theories of Californian scientists from Mount Zion (Joseph Weiss, Harold Sampson and others /1956–1986), who examined the process of short term psychotherapy and,
thirdly, on the theory of collusion, as suggested by Jürg Willi.
Jürg Willi (1975,1978,1985,1990) developed the concept of Henry Dicks on the “collusion” of spouses. It is based on the observation that couples bring different conflicts as variations on a single theme. Conflicts mostly involve a particular topic that makes a couple uneasy and creates a sort of “common unconscious of a couple”. This interplay created by a common unconscious is called collusion. A collusive relationship is one where, for unconscious reasons, the partners maintain and reinforce each other in a particular pair pattern. According to Willi’s concept of collusion, while individual behaviour is determined substantially by the individual history of the individual, in its manifest form it is essentially co-determined by the empowering or dampening behaviour of the partner, while his or her behaviour is again determined by their own individual history. (It is therefore a circular strengthening or damping.) Willi showed that both partners exhibit a disorder of the same kind, only manifested in the opposite way. These are polarised variants of the same psychological problem. However, in one partner it is manifested in a progressive-hypercompensatory form, while in the other in a regressive form of behaviour. (In therapy, for example, it can happen that the jealous one becomes the persecuted and the persecuted one becomes the jealous, the alcoholic becomes the teetotaler and the teetotaler becomes the alcoholic, the bully becomes the abused, while the abused turns into a bully, etc. So the two – unconsciously – share the same problem.
The Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group (Joseph Weiss, Harold Sampson and others (1956–1986) examined the process of short-term individual therapy (not couples or family therapy). But their ideas seems to be usefull also for couples therapy.
The conclusions of the research of the California school can be briefly summarised as follows (according to Weiss, 1990; Mikota, 1995, pp.105–108, Titl, S. 2014, p. 124–127):
1. „Psychological problems are rooted not in repressed impulses that maladaptively seek gratification (as suggested by the dynamic hypothesis) but in painful ideas known as ‘pathogenic beliefs’ (Weiss, 1990) that are maladaptive, i.e they present complications in adaptation to current adult conditions. In childhood, however, they helped the adaptation (or such was the patient’s childhood experience). Pathogenic beliefs are kinds of beliefs or axioms (or infantile fantasies) created by a child about how relationships function. They are unconscious, but they significantly affect people’s experience and behavior.
Several examples of pathogenic beliefs:
“If I want to be autonomous, I’ll hurt someone.”
“Other people don't like happy people. If I am happy, I will hurt or be punished.”
“If I want more from people, I’ll bother them, suck them dry.”
“I will be shamed for my desire to succeed.”
“For sexual desire I will be punished or shamed.”
Such beliefs developed in childhood as ways of adapting to very difficult or traumatic situations in relations with the most important people.
2. Patients in therapy, but also in certain situations of everyday life, (unconsciously) try not to confirm these maladaptive beliefs and disprove them – correct them because they complicate their lives. For this reason, they unconsciously test whether the situation in the relationship is safe enough, sometimes by provoking situations in which the other (therapist, partner) has to react to show that the tester (patient/client) has nothing to fear. For example, they make “excessive” demands on the therapist (or on the partner in the relationship), unconsciously observing how the other will behave. If the other (therapist, partner, friend, etc.) behaves by demonstrating that there is no risk of confirmation of PB, that there will be no repetition of the childhood trauma, the testing patient (partner) temporarily experiences reduced anxiety and feels more comfortable (safer) in the relationship. But this relief is only temporary as long as the tester does not realise what unconscious PB is at work and how he is testing. Unless he gains an insight (via interpretation), he is doomed to repeat, forced to repeat the tests again and again, often in a more dramatic way. As if unconsciously saying to oneself, “I hope it doesn't happen, but I'm not sure that in this new situation the other one won’t fail and it won't turn out to be as bad as in relationships I experienced in my childhood.” It is only when the patient gains an insight into pathogenic beliefs that he/she feels relieved and does not have to repeat the tests.
For example, a male patient who had an experience with his mother that she became seriously ill at the time of his separation from her (causing her illness in a child's phantasy) was terrified that his independence would hurt or annihilate his loved ones (hurt his mother). In therapy, he experimented with separation. He tried various forms and gradations of independence (from skipping sessions, to expressing disapproval, criticism to therapist/partner, threats to end therapy, etc. At the same time, he unconsciously watched and checked to see if he was injuring the objects of love (therapist, partner, etc.) when he allowed himself to be separated. The therapist must pass the patient test (he is not hurt by separation) and provide insight into the pathogenic beliefs tested (interpret the PB).
If the test subject (therapist in therapy/partner in a relationship) fails the test, the correction of PB fails, the test subject (e.g. patient in therapy) withdraws, her/his anxiety and discomfort in the relationship increase. Her/his testing stops (because she/he feels it is not safe enough), or becomes much more cautious, or ends the relationship (patient wants to leave therapy early, marriage is falling apart).
In our work with clients in couple and family therapies, we prefer not to use the term “pathogenic belief” because the issue is not that of pathology but of relationship problems. We prefer to use the notion of unconscious individual beliefs (UIB).
When two individuals of the opposite sex meet and start dating, from the very beginning, they communicate through many channels. Only some of them are conscious. Characteristic attractive body odour, movement, gestures, sound of voice, memories and hopes the other evokes in us etc. All these manifestations are the result not only of biological factors, but also of a certain basic attitudes, fantasies that “If I will in relationships desire about this….than happens that...” We call these basic attitudes “beliefs”, or “unconscious individual beliefes”.
Unconscious individual beliefs (UIB) develop at a very early age as a result of “procedures – natural, repetitive, often ritualised handling of and relating to the child. They have formed as inner, unconscious and self-evident patterns of action and relating to others and to the world, being completely unconscious, stored in implicit unconscious memory. This is also why they are unquestionable and manifested in acting out. Others arose defensively in situations where it was necessary to adapt to deprivation, repeated frustrations, traumatic situations, or to resolve internal conflict. These therefore have a defensive character and as they are stored in a declarative (explicit) memory, they can be remembered if patient’s defences are properly interpreted.
I consider this “shared problem” to be the result of an unconscious relationship belief that connects the two partners. This is why the two partners unconsciously chose each other in the first place. Unconsciously, they felt that they could solve or consolidate something of their own past with the other. If it works, collusion works. Conflicts, quarrels, or alienation result from the frustration of deep-seated unconscious beliefs about how relationships should work, both confronted with the great anxiety of repeating childhood threats. Both partners hope (unconsciously) to fight off their deep anxieties with the help of the other and ensure that their needs are met to an extent that has hitherto been unattainable and impossible.
When potential partners meet, they also test each other (deliberately and unconsciously). But they do not care about fixing their UIB (unlike patients in therapy). They seek a match or complementarity.
If people start dating, it is when they have very similar or complementary unconscious beliefs. This is why partners communicate intensively at the beginning of a relationship, sharing their experiences and plans, consciously and unconsciously observing and evaluating each other. Unconsciously, they test whether the other is a suitable object to help them remove deep anxiety and possibly achieve more satisfaction than if they were alone. If this process of mutual testing goes well, more security arises in the relationship, and partners begin to – unconsciously – create and form their common unconscious relationship beliefs, which bind (link) them together and by which they function without consciously realising it. Even later, they pass on this shared relationship belief to their children. Unconscious relationship beliefs thus initially organises the couple and later the whole family. Unconscious belief acts as a paradigm that determines the “rules of the game” – what is allowed and what is not allowed in a relationship, and what threats arise when rules (unconscious) are transgressed. Such beliefs may initially bring the couple/family together and create feelings of security, but after a certain period of time they may no longer apply – after a change in internal conditions, e.g. in an uneven progress of maturing in partners over the course of a lifetime (when one has been through successful psychotherapy, the birth of children may lead to different maturation of partners, the illness of one partner or even after a change in external conditions (getting poor or rich, shift of one or both on the social ladder, etc.) Life brings certain crossroads that confront the couple/family with the fact that the unconscious belief that used to unite them no longer suits them (creates the “problem” of the couple/family) and it is necessary to find a new one. Helping to find a new unconscious relationship belief is, in our opinion, the therapist's most important task.
When looking for an URB of couples, we ask ourselves (we create a hypothesis) what the partners/family –unconsciously– have (or had) in common. What unites them both (the whole family).
How to find unconscious relationship beliefs (URB) ?
1. In therapy, URB is manifested by a specific transference of the relationship system to the therapist. Therapist tends to function (think, experience) in countertransference, based on the same belief (URB) according to which the couple (family) operates.
2. “In relationships it goes like this: if we want this desirable thing... then a threat like this... happens.”
3. The partners share a common unconscious belief: “This is how relationships are supposed to be...”
4. “Love is when … .”
5. “In order to have a relationship, we have to experience... do...”
6. “ shared problem that partners solve is...”
Ad 1)
In therapy, URB is manifested by a specific transference and countertransference of the relationship system (partners/spouses/family) to the therapist. Berenstein refers to “imposition”, which is based on the link. “Imposition” acts on connected entities as if imprinting its stamp on them, which is independent of the will of the recipient and changes their subjectivity simply by belonging to the link. In our experience, the therapist then tends to function (think) according to the same paradigm-belief (URB) according to which the couple (family) operates
Vignette A:
A very handsome, wealthy couple were referred to my consulting room. They had serious conflicts in which they physically assaulted each other, threatened suicide, often being unfaithful so that the other would find out– – “in return” for her or his infidelity, competing to see who was more popular and who made more money. They abused each other, but they were unable to break up.
Before each session, I pored over their documentation, and in therapy I competitively searched for the best interpretations. When I noticed my unusual behaviour, I began to wonder why I functioned in this particular way. I became aware of the feelings of shame for my “imperfection” in front of this “amazing couple” and it was only then that I realised this was also their common way of functioning. I realised that both suffer from URB, which can be formulated as: “Only one of us can be perfect! The other is absolutely valueless! I must try to be perfect in order to impress the other, or I will sink into feelings of shame for my worthlessness and be abandoned. When the other is perfect, I am worthless.” I said aloud: “It seems to be a question of who will be better because it is only she or he who deserves love.” The gradual reflection of this narcissistic unconscious belief, which leads to a constant rotation of the position of euphoric winner-disgraced loser, gradually helped to calm down their relationship.
Ad 2)
Another way to find URB: This paradigm can also be used in such a way, where the dots are meant to be substituted for a specific couple, or family fantasy: “In relationships it goes like this: “If we want this desirable thing ... then such a threat will arise ... “
Vignette B
A couple of “eco-warriors” came into therapy. As soon as they entered my consulting room, they were indignant that I was using palm oil candles and had a synthetic carpet, and they kindly advised me that such things were not eco-friendly. They had serious problems with both their teenage children, who started using drugs and lived very provocative, “extravagant” lives.
In the course of the family therapy, I felt irritated by both partners. My feelings of irritation resulted in my countertransference tendency to adopt very modest attitudes or, on the contrary, defiantly emphasise my difference and hedonism. As it transpired, the husband lived in his first marriage with a very creative woman who died of hard drug abuse. But he loved her very much, and until she completely destroyed herself, they lived a rich, social life full of drugs, alcohol, food, group sex, and many different experiments.
After her death, he changed completely. He found a “humble” woman with rigid environmentalist views, and together they lived a very austere life with a contemptuous attitude toward the “material, self-indulgent world”. They raised their children “rationally” – in a cold, depriving way. For example, their children were not allowed to have any soft toys, so that they would not be spoiled. I formulated their family relationship beliefs for myself as follows: “In relationships it goes like this: if you want pleasant things and enjoy yourself . . . you become addicted to and dependent on pleasant things, spoiled and unable to regulate it, because we are all very ‘hungry’. When we talked about their belief, we arrived at a different formulation: “One can be proud of oneself if one overcomes one’s hunger and can abstain from the things one desires, and that will eventually save one's life.” The children functioned according to the same belief, only rebelling against it.
Ad 3)
Vignette C
A couple whose children were suffering from psychosomatic illness was referred to me by a psychiatrist. Although they were handsome, gifted and well-educated people, misfortune seemed to haunt them at every turn. The wife was recently raped, their car was stolen, her husband’s company was put under distraint, everyone was often ill... I was surprised how “easily” they seemed to be coping with such adversity. They seemed to be at peace with everything. Once, when they came to the session, the remote door control did not work, and I had to go and open the door for them in the house where I work. I opened the door and, after a day of sitting in my chair, I was happy to run up the stairs to get some exercise. When I turned around, I saw the family downstairs, watching me with an air of disgust. As soon as they entered my office, they commented ironically on the “unseemly athletic temperament”. When I pointed this out to them, they answered in unison with pride in their voices: “Whoever God loves, He visits them with a cross!”
I formulated their URB for myself as follows: “The more suffering and damage we experience and endure without objection, the more God (frustrating parent) will love us, and we can have respect for ourselves. The more we abstain from things, the more we deserve love. If we experienced health, success and happiness we would be without the right to love (self-respect).” Over the course of the session and in the following sessions, we discussed this belief in various contexts. After a few sessions, they came up with the idea that they spent their whole lives solving the question: “Can we be loved by God (by ourselves) if we experience happiness, energy and success in our lives?” Afterwards, there was a change in their mutual ability to contain and provide containment to their children, even if they live happily, with vigour.
Another paradigm they themselves later came up with was: “In order to have a relationship, love, self-respect, we must suffer!” In further therapy, it was confirmed that they had learned to adapt to the very depriving and frustrating tyrannical environment of their original families by repressing their anger in the hope that they would then be better treated and, in addition, earn a reward –the feeling that they are strong, good children who do not make things complicated for their parents.
Ad 4)
In the case of an (A) narcissistic couple, there may be a shared problem that they solve “How to be loved and valuable when it can only be one of us – either you or me.” Hence a number of other beliefs such as “If I show how great I am, you will want to humiliate me” etc.
In the second case, (B), the common linking problem the partners dealt with was oral phantasy: “Is it possible to live a comfortable life without becoming dependent on it?” Kleinian psychoanalysis would speak of the phantasy of fear of dependence on a good breast.
In the third case, (C), they dealt with the belief “We will only receive love if we suffer.”
Beginning of a couple’s relationship:
While in a therapeutic relationship we need a relationship as secure as possible in order to correct object representations, in love relationships, most people need an object safe enough to share and create unconscious relationship beliefs in an intersubjective space, but threatening enough to make sense and appeal. In an overly safe relationship, where it is obvious that their testing would pass very easily they would (mostly) not feel the requisite certainty that the other really perceives them, that they are important to him/her. It would be too boring.
But if the relationship is too threatening, because it is obvious that it will not be possible to pass the testing successfully, one does not (with exceptions) enter it at all, or (in most cases) cannot tolerate it. Thus, neither the first nor the second instance produces the right “chemistry of love”.
When Mrs. Jana got married she considered her husband Mirek a “"miracle. Mirek was her boss, educated, sophisticated, wealthy CEO. She needed to test then if she could be of value to others, if she were natural and autonomous. If anyone could ever love her like that, and Mirek admired her for her liveliness and spontaneity.
Jana did not get along with her mother, and her father constantly criticised her for not doing something right. Both parents fought violently, affectively throughout her childhood, and her father eventually left. She had a turbulent and rebellious adolescence, with drugs and petty crime. When Jana met Mirek, she was thrilled to find such a calm and stable man. She wanted him to “raise” her to “behave properly” because she had learned from her childhood that she was bad.
Mirek was a reasonable, well-mannered, calm but depressive man who tried to do things “the right way” so that Jana would be satisfied. Mirek came from a family where it was important to “behave properly”. He had always felt that it was completely unacceptable, or even embarrassing, to act unreasonably, or emotionally. Feelings, or even affectations, were never expressed at home. He said: “My parents never argued. My father just got up and left one day.” (Mirek was 6 at the time.) His mother suffered from long-term depression and commited suicide shortly thereafter. He was raised by a “good” grandmother. Unconsciously, Mirek understood his mother’s suicide as his guilt and spent his life undoing it.
It was only after the birth of her children that Jana became dissatisfied. She reproached her husband for never giving her a passionate hug, never having romantic “crazy” ideas and never getting angry. Mirek was deeply hurt and angered. After all, he tried so hard to be reasonable and affectless, as his parents and grandmother wanted him to be, and as Jana liked it at first. At the beginning of their therapy, he was unaware of his own feelings of hurt and anger. Instead of emotion, he began to have sexual and other difficulties. First he tried to ”learn” the way Jana wanted him to behave and then “enact” the emotions for her. But they were both disappointed. Jana saw his “affective and romantic” reactions as fake and insincere, and she was disgusted. Mirek tried hard to fulfil her demands, but his endeavour was not appreciated, which he did not understand and he was very troubled by it even though he did not let it on. His unconscious feelings of guilt and repressed anger manifested themselves in disorders of potency, which further complicated the relationship.
Initially, Jana needed a safe relationship, but later she began testing her own UIB that she was not worthy enough to be loved. It was no longer enough that Mirek was calm and stable. She needed to see if he would love her, even if she expressed her critical side, not just a sweet, submissive “spontaneity”.
Their shared URB could be formulated as: “If we show emotions, spontaneity and do not behave as expected by others/partners, we will be wrong, criticised and rejected.” They tried to repair this belief in their marriage.
Unconscious beliefs are often passed down through generations in families and intertwined in different generations. Sometimes the URB of the two partners reinforce each other, sometimes compensate, sometimes transform and influence each other, or form “holes” in the family matrix (e.g. when the parties keep secrets they cannot talk about) as described by Pierre Benghozi (2009, 2010) (Titl, 2016). While in some generations they may manifest themselves in the form of resilience and protect or support, in another generation they may manifest themselves maladaptively as mental illness, psychosomatic illness, or behavioural disturbances. In one generation, as something that unites relationships, at other times as something that breaks and divides them. The URB thus connects individuals both horizontally (in partnership, family, friendship and other relationships) and vertically (with past generations). It acts as a kind of psychological DNA that contains information about the traumas of the individual as well as those of past generations.
17.2. 2021 Prague