ABSTRACT
With few exceptions, which may have diagnostic significance because they are exceptions, most married couples, when asked to recall their first encounter with each other, recall not only the impressions they had of each other but also a single, selected moment which in its visual qualities and specificity has many of the characteristics of an early childhood recollection. Even when questioned separately the partners often produce the same moment as the subject of the recollection, as if there were some unspoken agreement between them about the significance of that moment, perhaps as if the shared recollection defined for them in metaphor the nature of their current relationship. We can call this shared recollection the First-Encounter-of-a-Close-Kind (FECK) story. 1 If the FECK story is a spontaneously-and jointly-selected parable of a marriage, then we have available to us a convenient assessment tool which may show how the partners themselves characterize the main themes of their marriage.
