ABSTRACT
In 2016, the Chinese government replaced the one-child policy with a new two-children policy, and stated that in the near future, policies that set limits on reproduction would be abolished entirely. Further, as Guggenbuhl-Craig notes, ‘[m]arriage involves not only a man and a woman who happily love each other and raise offspring together, but rather two people who are trying to individuate, to find their “soul’s salvation”’. This points to another direction: as a psychological relationship between two human beings, marriage not only requires individual independence and integrity but also serves and fosters individuation and integrity. As Beebe notes, in analytical relationships, integrity embraces the limitations of the patient’s character and contains its deficiencies ‘in the midst of ambitions for [the patient’s] psychological growth’. Marriage, as a psychological relationship, which also follows the model of ‘container and the contained’, albeit in a more flexible way, could do the same.
