Working with couples as parents and parents as couples

Abstract

The Tavistock Clinic approach to brief psychoanalytically based interventions with parents, infants and young children focuses on the parent-couple relationship as a key ‘port of entry’ to understanding underlying family difficulties. Couple relationship problems impact negatively on parental functioning, with their young children often caught up in the dynamics of polarised parental attitudes. Addressing areas of difficulty in the parental relationship can provide relief to children and reduce their symptoms. Clinical examples illustrate key concepts underpinning this approach to work with parents and children. In the first, united parental functioning is disrupted by disturbances in the internal and interpersonal representations of paternal and a maternal function. In the second, a family struggling with conflicts, anxieties and defences associated with the triangular constellation of mother, father and child – the Oedipal situation – was not able to manage the very strong feelings of loss, envy and jealousy generated in the child.