ABSTRACT
This chapter presents psychoanalytic work with couples who are engaged in high conflict or entrenched divorce and separations. It describes some of the central ideas in working psychoanalytically with divorce and separation and also provides one approach to working with high conflict couples in particular. The chapter suggests that the high levels of conflict associated with divorce can be understood as the result of changes occurring in three different psychological domains. Separation and divorce are deeply stressful events. Divorce shares with other major life events the requirement that those involved manage change on a grand scale. A useful typology of divorces was suggested by Christopher Clulow and Christopher Vincent who conceptualised divorces according to the kind of projective system of the couple. The stress of separation and divorce may therefore be understood as arising from change occurring simultaneously in all three domains.
