ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the particular way projective identification is used to create this kind of relationship, drawing on the work of Klein and Rosenfeld. It suggests that the creation of such a relationship develops from a different kind of "unconscious choice of partner" than that usually understood by the notion of unconscious choice as developed within the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute. The chapter illustrates the ideas with clinical material drawn from couples seen for marital psychotherapy in both single and joint sessions. It describes a particular kind of couple relationship in which the couple have a problem feeling psychically separate and different from each other, and hence create between them a relationship in which they feel locked together in a defensive collusion within which there is only very limited growth. All couples in marital relationships have to struggle with the problem of intimacy versus separateness.
