ABSTRACT
The family and the couple are at the crossroads between individual functioning and group functioning, between the individual, the family and the couple of which it is a part and between the inner world of the individual and the world of the relations that it contributes to the construction of and from which it has been generated. Interpretation will also highlight the relational configurations immobilising the members of the family or couple; it will be an interpretation of the transpersonal defences that the members have built together, in the course of time, to cope with the shared anxieties that are re-enacted in the here-and-now of the session. At every moment in the life of a family, and consequently in every family session, a process is underway whereby the interpretation needs to be situated inside that process. The psychotherapist’s countertransference experience, that enabled her to tune in with the girl’s smile, became a very important element of interpretation and transformation.
