ABSTRACT
The selfdyad, provides a construct that integrates existing psychoanalytic ideas, especially those from an object relations perspective with those from a self psychological perspective. With the increase in the demand for couple treatment and couple therapy training throughout the United States and Great Britain, there has also been a corresponding increase in the variety of psychotherapeutic strategies deriving from the literature pertaining to couple and family treatments. The supportive therapy may have been sustaining and helpful, but for the individual patient only, while leaving the intricate dynamic organisation of the couple relationship relatively untouched and unmodified, while at high risk for further deterioration, especially when the individual therapy comes to an end. Sexual disjunctions, the chronic disagreement on the frequency or preferred sexual activities can appear with such salience for the couple that one or both partners can experience an erosion of the self, and even a collapse of the self.
