ABSTRACT
This powerful account of an important meeting heralding development in a couple’s therapy brings alive not only the couple, Peter and Helen, but their relationships with the many threesomes in their lives. In this commentary, I highlight the oedipal and three-way relationship aspects of the couple’s story, to show why triadic relationships are so significant for them, and, indeed, for all couples. It has been observed that wherever there is a couple, there will always be a third. Phillips (1996, p. 94), writing that, “Coupledom is a sustained resistance to the intrusion of third parties … Two’s company, but three’s a couple”, perceives that the couple needs an outsider to establish its identity. Ruszczynski (2005), however, sees an alternative configuration of a dyad–triad relationship, as a “marital triangle” composed of the couple and their relationship; the psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist’s task, thus, lies in enabling the couple to use a shared perception of this third entity as a therapeutic resource. It is important, then, to keep in mind that, in Peter and Helen’s story, there are three principal characters—Peter, Helen, and their therapist.
