ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the clinical narrative to provide an experience-near illustration of analytic sensibility in couple therapy. Edmund had missed a session, and had missed any reaction from the couple therapist to his absence, and now was thinking of terminating. The splitting of the chopsticks brings to mind the image of the couple coming apart or, more hopefully, differentiating in order to work together. Like split chopsticks, Edmund's parental couple had separated before his birth, and had never come back together securely, and so Edmund was born starving into a field that was starved of affection. The couple therapist will describe the couple's presentation and history gathered during the consultation and early phase of treatment. Edmund and Catherine started thinking of the prematurely proposed endgame of their treatment in order to flee from loss, longing, shame, and a shared fear of unconscious catastrophe potentially coming into the session once more.
