ABSTRACT
In the practice of couple therapy, the therapist faces a wider variety of transferences than is typical of an individual therapeutic relationship. The individual transferences Jessica Kingsley and Karl Abraham exhibited toward each other were indicative of the influence one-person projective identifications exert over couple interactions. In containment, the therapist takes in the couple's projected material and reflects upon, mentalizes, and reformulates it so that, when it is re-described to the couple, it is in a more tolerable and comprehensible form. The most common means by which the moulding occurs is projective identification, which in couples occurs in both "one-person" and "two-person" forms. Because couples in treatment exhibit the wide variety of transferences described above, the couple therapist must be prepared to provide containing interpretations for each form of transference. Individual and joint transferences may also be classified as either contextual or focused, depending on whether the transference focuses on a specific object or on the surrounding environment.
