ABSTRACT

“Joint personality” is a bit of a misnomer really, for the couple are much more than the sum of their two selves. When at lunch with a friend, Jill bubbles and fizzes more than at home. It is as if she reclaims her old, pre-couple personality. To have made it work at all, considering the kind of legacy left by both parental couples, should earn them a gold star. However, neither could entirely abandon an entrenched position taken up in order to detoxify the effects of their internal parental couples. Tom and Tina both wanted a relationship different to that of their parents; indeed, they deliberately sought a partner who would ensure this. Jon was troubled by fantasies that sometimes came to him while having sexual relations with his wife. Like a balloon, the boundary wall of any living system—a fish, a wood, a family, or a nation—changes shape according to the pressure being exerted from within and from without.