Abstract The psychoanalytic literature on the meaning of therapist gender for individual patients is reviewed and considered in relation to the practice of marital psychotherapy. Clinical examples are considered and it is concluded that the gender of the therapist(s) in psychoanalytical work with couples is significant. It is likely that couple psychotherapy with a male/female therapist pair can be quicker than individual therapy because there is the opportunity for several issues to be worked through in parallel in the former; where the co-therapists are of the same gender, the therapeutic relationship may seem less accessible to the opposite sex patient; the gender of the therapist affects the way in which transference develops. It seems that providing a male/female therapist pair maximizes the opportunity to work through therapeutic issues.