ABSTRACT
This paper, which has not been published before, has enjoyed a vogue amongst trainees at the Society of Analytical Psychology, probably because of the way in which Williams makes use of animus/anima theory to enlarge the more recent clinical concept of unconscious collusion within a couple. She shows how the parental images, themselves a blend of the personal and the typical, influence partner choice and also the on-going vicissitudes of marriage. Finally, her summary of Jung’s idea of there being a container and a contained in marriage leads on to further discussion of the impact in marriage of projected parental imagery, containing, as it does, infantile wishes and desires.
Thus, classical Jungian theory is intertwined with a more developmental approach.
A.S.
