ABSTRACT
Donald Winnicott, a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, coined the adjective "good enough" to describe the qualities of parenting that facilitated the healthy development of children. It is a template that can usefully be transferred to marriage. This chapter highlights the multidimensional nature of marriage, mapping out terrains of personal and social histories in an attempt to take stock of this institution-cum-relationship. A central "condition" of present-day marriage is the expectation of companionship. From the outset, psychoanalytic insights into marriage have paid particular attention to the unconscious contracts that operate between partners, contracts designed to manage shared anxieties. It is important to add that interpersonal boundaries are violated in good marriages; indeed, there can be no development without the positive outcome of processes of projective identification. The success of individual partnerships depends, in turn, upon how facilitating the environment is for marriage to operate in a "good-enough" way.
