ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the need to flip-flop between the approach and the intimate quality of disturbance within the inter-subjective space of the couple, which may be unique to neurological injuries. A technology of socio-emotional rehabilitation in the service of couples' connection should be informed by the neuroscience and phenomenology of love. Pre-existing connections within inter-subjective experiences may be withdrawn or eliminated as a result of some social communicative impairments, with perhaps a simultaneous absence/malign presence inter-subjective quality. Couples often bring their story of closeness and intimacy since the time of injury, which may be difficult to discern from a story of problems in the individual survivor post-injury and/or a story of identities or the partner's misunderstanding of the survivor. Systemic skills in elaboration and creating new connection and relationships within language and meaning could be said to be a very sophisticated use of more cortical-based mirroring, social inferential and mentalizing systems.
