ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part shows that when we speak of “marriage”, we are using the word not only in the sense of the social reality of a marital couple, but also symbolically to refer to an internal capacity for marriage or coupling. This capacity is the capacity to allow opposites and differences to come together. The part focuses on the Oedipus complex as the central concept in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with couples. It emphasizes that the experience of trust has within it the possible experience of betrayal. What constitutes betrayal to any particular couple relationship depends on the conscious and unconscious covenant first made between them. The unfaithfulness that may be the cause of the sense of betrayal need not necessarily be only, or even primarily, a sexual unfaithfulness.
