ABSTRACT
Much literature exists on what defines psychoanalysis. Central to the psychoanalytic model of the mind is that human nature develops within and is fundamentally based on intrapsychic, interactive, and interpersonal processes – processes necessary to meet the needs and requirements of the developing individual. One of the fundamental issues in couple work, and also in individual work, is the psychoanalytic task of developing the capacity for more mature, depressive functioning and relating, as opposed to more primitive, narcissistic relating. The strongest bond between a couple may be the harmony of their unconscious images and patterns of relating. In understanding and working psychoanalytically with a couple relationship, even those couples and individuals who do not have a primarily narcissistic psychic structure will, from time to time, find themselves dominated by the anxieties, defences, and types of object relations of the paranoid-schizoid position. Tension between the more narcissistic and more mature object relations is present in all individuals.
