ABSTRACT
Therapy facilitates growth and insight; it should not convert, indoctrinate, or pass value judgements. Shame is extremely common in the couples who come to therapy. Indeed, needing help is itself seen as shameful, as if psychotherapists should all be perfect. Couples are different and have different therapeutic needs. Therapy should be tailored to the couple, not the couple to the therapy. Motives for coming into therapy vary, and there is usually more than one. Curiously, it is very rare that one or both members of the pair explicitly request understanding from the therapist of what is happening between them, though from the therapist’s point of view this is the object of the exercise. Throughout the course of a typical therapy the therapist fulfils many functions, all aimed ultimately at facilitating understanding by the couple of why and how they came to the position in which they find themselves.
