ABSTRACT
G. Kishur and C. Figley spoke of the chiasmal effect of sexual abuse, illustrating its capacity to become a traumatogenic point of contact between two people—one the survivor, one their partner. R. Nasim and Y. Nadan propose a form of therapeutic “witnessing” in working with single-trauma couples. This is founded on the assumption that establishing the witnessing that was absent during the traumatic event in childhood can break traumatic re-enactments in adulthood. In the dual-trauma couple there is a valency towards issues of power and control, competition between partners, external boundary ambiguity, survivor guilt, preoccupied-dismissing patterns, and minimising the effects of past-trauma experiences. It has been argued that there is more potential for countertransference reactions in working with couples because the dyadic dynamic happens in front of the therapist, and also, because of the triangular dimension of the work, involves the therapist more directly.
