ABSTRACT
Offering help to a couple in the brief time span of a consultation, which will usually be just one or two meetings, can seem an almost impossible task for the couple psychotherapist, or indeed any worker offering therapeutic help to a couple. The therapist's capacity to hold a couple state of mind is not simply 'holding both partners in mind', though this is part of it. W. Bion describes how the young infant splits off and projects into the mother feelings that it cannot manage and which it experiences as threatening to destroy him. W. Colman has described marriage as a potential psychological container. R. Britton elucidates an aspect of the oedipal struggle which is very important in thinking about couples. The chapter provides two brief illustrations from consultations with couples—the first who felt contained by the therapist's couple state of mind, and the second who began during the consultation to find or re-find this capacity themselves.
