ABSTRACT
A dance between belonging and shaming. A dance done particularly by couples, which is so intimate that it makes working with couples in psychotherapy distinctly different. The connection to the later theory of Gestalt therapy is evident. The organism is part of a larger field of organism and environment. The concept of the couple as a self in the organism/environment field offers a unique aesthetic to enter into contact with a couple in therapy. In essence we realise the couple we are contacting is One Life. They appear as two people of course, but in the view of the couple as one, a richer fuller tapestry emerges. While describing the separate person as “whole in himself’, Buber paradoxically at the same time tells how she is a Thou which fills the universe. The couple is the new creation and the Polsters describe challenge of risking capture in the union, gambling with the dissolution of individuality and wagering our independent existence.
