ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author introduces a few ideas and terms that are essential to his investigations of the couples and families whose stories and interviews populate these pages. He presents a more complete introduction in The Primer of Object Relations by Jill Savege Scharff and himself, published in 2005 and available in English and Chinese. The psychoanalytic study of the mind, beginning with S. Freud, valued the role of unconscious processes that underpin daily life and that write our dreams. Freud’s own study was intensely individual, even though his famous case histories are replete with descriptions of patients’ families, almost all as reported by the patients themselves. Many disciplines, including psychoanalysis, have contributed to our understanding of child and individual development. It is essential to have a working understanding of the processes of both individual and family growth and maturation, from the beginning of life through old age.
