ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how early experiences shape the minds of the individuals that later form the couple, and how this early experience then affects the couple’s combined capacity to negotiate change. It focuses on splitting and projection of feelings at the heart of many of the problems that couples and families bring to the consulting room. The chapter provides the contextual framework for facilitating the process of exploring, understanding and integrating these often split internal object relationships. The object relationship patterns are dynamic; they are constantly being activated and reworked, and there is a two-way interaction between what occurs intrapsychically and interpersonally. By extension, R. Fairbairn’s model also valorises the real relationship between the family or couple and the therapist. The chapter highlights how ideas about internal object relations from R. Fairbairn, M. Klein, D. W. Winnicott and W. Bion come together to shape a theoretical model of the infant’s mind.
