The Married in Treatment

Abstract

MARRIAGES, rather than being made in heaven, appear to have their roots in more earthy dynamisms—in complex interactions of congruent, reciprocal, and correlative needs, in sociopsychologic attractions and barriers. The marital state is the most complex and possibly the least understood of all human relationships. The expectation that two people will be able to maintain a close and loving relationship through the varied stages of each individual's development, through the internal stresses produced by emotional and physical changes, through the external pressures of economic and other forces, is the most difficult and important demand that man has made of himself. The intimate nature of the marital relationship presupposes that changes in one partner will bring about changes in the other. What then is the effect on the marital state when one or both partners undergo psychoanalytic treatment? What is the probability that psychoanalysis with its focus