INTRODUCTION

Studies on psychoanalysis of the couple and the family developed progressively from clinical stimuli, such as the treatment of seriously ill patients and children and adolescents.

Initially, parenting and family studies were stimulated by two major strands of work, child psychoanalysis on the one hand and group analysis on the other.

In their search for clinical methods and theoretical understanding in these settings, some psychoanalysts have transferred the models of classical psychoanalysis to the couple and family, while others have taken new paths, emphasising intersubjective dynamics and the links between members . All this has produced new discoveries and understandings, and it is curious to observe how much psychoanalysis has only today rediscovered, in other words, experiences and observations that for us are already an acquired heritage.

It is often the case that psychoanalysts, closed within their own school of thought, do not read the work of colleagues from other schools, but certainly in this case it is only partially resolved. In addition, psychoanalytic work with families and couples has often been confused with the systemic approach in its more behaviourist versions; the setting has therefore been confused with the model, and perhaps only now are we really trying to clarify things.

The AIPCF (International Association of Psychoanalysis of Couple and Family) was conceived in 2006 in Montreal on the initiative of a number of European and American analysts, including Alberto Eiguer, Evelyn Granjon Rosa Jaitin, Ezequiel Jaroslawsky,Anne Loncan, Roberto and Ana Losso, Daniela Lucarelli, Anna Maria Nicolò, Gabriela Tavazza, Gemma Trapanese ,David and Jill Scharff to bring together psychoanalysts and psychotherapists with a psychoanalytic orientation who were interested in the field.   .

Although 24 years have passed, a survey of the theories that have constituted the reference point for psychoanalytic work with couples and families on different continents may nevertheless be useful, to enable readers to gain an overview of this topic.

I will briefly summarise the main psychoanalytic orientations in this field, aware that my choice and my rapid and superficial review cannot do justice to the richness and variety of contributions that, starting with Freud himself, have come down to us today. There are many authors I have not mentioned and I hope readers will forgive me because my aim is to offer points of reference in this sometimes messy galaxy and to reveal the roots that have characterised and characterise it in the current overview.

Prehistory

In the field of psychoanalysis, the first, embryonic references to family therapy appear already in the writings of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Although the founder of psychoanalysis always emphasised the individual and laid the foundation for his treatment by developing a theory in terms of intrapsychic structures, in his earlier writings, such as ‘Elizabeth von R.’ (Freud, 1905e), family history and its underlying dynamics occupy a large space and lead us to link a symptom to a particular family dynamic. ‘Little Hans’ (Freud, 1909b), whose phobic problems were addressed through Freud’s work with his father, can be considered the first case of family intervention. Hans’ phobia represented not only an intrapsychic conflict, but also a difficulty in family relationships: the solution to the problem can therefore also be attributed to the change in the father’s attitude who, after meetings with Freud, became much more attentive and aware of his son’s needs. This paved the way for the disappearance of the son’s phobic symptom whose main objective, among other causes of the phobia, was to attract the parents’ attention and make the father rush to his aid. The study of Leonardo da Vinci led Freud to take a renewed interest in the family constellation, in his view a significant factor in generating Leonardo’s homosexuality due to the very close link with his mother and the absence of a strong father in his early years (Freud, 1910c). On a theoretical level, Identification Theory and the Second Topography introduce the theme of intersubjectivity. With Group Psychology and Ego Analysis (Freud, 1921c), an epistemological leap occurs. Freud states that ‘in the mental life of the individual someone is always involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent: and so from the very beginning individual psychology, in this extended but justifiable sense of the words, is at the same time also social psychology’ (p. 69). But further references, even if not explicitly formulated, can also be perceived more substantially in Freud’s contemporaries and pupils. These include Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933). Freud’s favourite disciple dealt with the adult-child relationship and trauma. By introducing, among other things, the concept of the conflictual and pathogenic relationship between the abusive adult and the abused child, he went far beyond the primary intrapsychic processes described by Freud with regard to psychic trauma and included object relations in his trauma studies. In doing so, he enriched the theory by clarifying the distorted functioning of the child’s sense of reality. The focus on the importance of adult disavowal and deception provided a new tool for understanding and processing. The development of child psychoanalysis and the attention given to the mother-child relationship in the 1920s and 1930s would become one of the cardinal points of family psychoanalysis. At the 1920 Hague Congress, Hermine Hug-Hellmut (1871-1924), arguing that an analysis conducted with parents could prevent psychological difficulties in children, showed the close connection between the psychic functioning of parental couples and the child. Anna Freud (1895-1982) illustrated concepts in psychoanalytic theory that lend themselves to explaining the interpersonal functioning between individuals, such as the ‘displacement mechanism’ or ‘identification with the aggressor’. In The Psychoanalytic Treatment of Children (1927) he wrote of the forces one must fight against in order to treat childhood neuroses, which are not only of internal origin but also derive in part from outside. She went on to say that one has the right to demand of the child analyst an adequate assessment of the child’s environment, just as She insists that the analyst be able to understand the child’s own internal situation (p. 92). However, we are still a long way from imagining an individualised and specific work in these contexts. From then on, positions will gradually assert themselves that will increasingly emphasise the importance of the environment and relationships. In 1936, at the 9th International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Nyon, Switzerland, one of the first to be held in a Romance language, the theme of the family appeared for the first time: ‘Familial Neurosis and the Neurotic Family’. René Laforgue (1936), one of the keynote speakers, spoke of his experience of “analysing several family members at the same time” and stated that the treatment of the parents was reflected in the recovery of the children.

In Great Britain

After the war, a new sensitivity began to emerge and at that time Michael and Enid Balint ran a marriage counselling centre. Enid Balint (1963) was the author of a pioneering study in this field. She pointed out how the couple relationship is not only an area of sharing, but also undifferentiated and confused. She described how the relationship is characterised by a level of intimacy that establishes exclusive communication between the couple’s unconscious minds. John Bowlby published a clinical study in those years entitled The Study and Reduction of Group Tensions in the Family (1949), in which he described interviews with family members as auxiliary to individual sessions. In this article he recounted the case of a boy he had analysed for two years without any results, which is why he subsequently experimented with a psychoanalytic family session. Although Bowlby considered this experience of family sessions experimental, he wrote that he rarely used this method more than once or twice in the same case; however, he came to use it almost habitually after the first interview and before starting the actual therapy (ibid.).

The years 1950-1970 will be considered an extremely interesting and lively period in this respect. In the United States, N. Ackerman, M. Bowen, I. Boszormeny-Nagy, T. Lidz and J. Framo were among the first to affirm a continuity with psychoanalytic theory, while proposing a development that went beyond the individual.Nathan Ackerman (1908-1971) worked in New York where he founded the Family Mental Health Clinic (today the Ackerman Institute), one of the most important family therapy centres. In his essay “Family Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: The Implications of Difference” (1962), he illustrated and disseminated a therapeutic approach, a type of technique that continued to be based on intrapsychic work while integrating it with family group therapy. Ackerman regarded unconscious family processes as fundamental, drawing attention in clinical work to defences and resistance to the therapeutic process. He was the first to express the concept of ‘scapegoating’, with which he demonstrates that the pathology of a family member can be brought out in a way that is functional to all family processes.

In later years, the application of object relations theory to the functioning of the family and couple began to orientate, as it still does today, many English-speaking psychoanalysts who, drawing on the arguments of Ronald Fairbairn and Melanie Klein and using the concepts of projective identification and projection, studied and still study these contexts. And so collusion, a reciprocal interweaving of projective identifications as defined by Dicks (1967), has been considered the basis of couple and family functioning. Continuing in this vein, Stanley Ruszczynski (1993; Ruszczynski & Fisher, 1995) in England, Andreas Giannakoulas (1992) in Italy and Jill and David Scharff (1991) in the United States, further developed this orientation. Exploring the topic in an innovative and creative way, among the Americans Otto Kernberg (1991, 1998) argues that the couple is the place where the conscious and unconscious activation of internalised object relations takes place and within which the superegoic functions of both partners are activated.   For Kernberg, there is a common ego ideal that has a certain weight in the future of the couple relationship. He also considers the couple’s mutual influence in the social context and in particular in relation to the group of friends. In Anglo-Saxon countries, one can assume that underlying the studies on these issues was the need to open up to the social dimension, which had already begun with the traumatising effects of the war and the need for consistent and competent work with the parents of children in care. London itself was a melting pot of ideas, theories and experiments. The Tavistock Institute for Human Relations in London is and has been for many years a centre of excellence for research on couple and family studies and intervention with parents. Countless members of this institute have produced major works in this regard, such as H. V. Dicks, Tom Main, Michael and Enid Balint and G. Teruel. In his work Conjugal Tensions (1967), Dicks was the first to set up systematic clinical work with couples, using as a basis: a four-person setting (the patient couple and the therapist couple), the unconscious choice of partner, the concepts of collusion and dyadic membrane. Above all, the concept of collusion, a shared game between the members of the couple, finds its foundation in the reciprocal and cross projective identification between the members of the couple, which leads to the formation of an integrated unity and a shared Self in the couple (Nicolò, Picoanalisis y familia, Herder 2014 p. 36).

If the war had definitely drawn attention to the social dimension, in the late 1960s the development of an anti-psychiatric movement made it necessary to broaden interest in the cultural context within which mental disorder emerges. This led to a widespread interest in the family. Some studies and important research were conducted in this field by Ronald D. Laing (1927-1989), a disciple of Winnicott and representative of the anti-psychiatric movement. His volumes The Divided Self (1960), Self and Others (1961) and The Politics of the Family and Other Essays (1971) exerted great cultural influence in English-speaking, European and Latin American countries. Laing is credited, among other things, with the development of the concept of ‘transpersonal defence’ (1967), which for some would become one of the conceptual cornerstones of family psychoanalysis. Laing offers an understanding of the schizophrenic symptom within the family context, showing in an innovative way how mental disorders can represent a particular type of recovery from familial and intrapsychic conflicts. Laing’s interest in the social and political aspect of mental disorders made him gradually move away from psychoanalysis, while in the rest of the world the relational aspect of psychoanalytic theory was being developed through group theory and object relations theory. In this strand of object relations theory are Jill and David Scharff, who founded a school and institute, the International Psychoanalytic Institute, and state: ‘The family is a small intimate group united within it by reciprocal projective and introjective identifications, at all levels of psychic organisation: from the conjugal couple at its centre down to each individual, there can be many possible combinations of relationships between parents, children, siblings and the extended family. In couples and families, deprivation and trauma reduce and alter the capacity for accurate projective identification resonance, while positively attuned interactions promote the growth of the ability to tolerate negative experiences and emotions’.  (Scharff and Scharf 2004)

Mary Morgan, a Tavistock analyst, more recently came up with the concept of the ‘state of mind of the couple’. The analyst’s task is to maintain a ‘couple’s state of mind’. This internal state for the analyst consists of preserving in his or her mind the functioning of both partners and their modes of relating . It thus performs the therapeutic function of containment and restores the patients’ vision of their mutual link.

In Argentina

Argentina was one of the countries where psychoanalysis of the couple and family was first developed; two authors are particularly significant: Pichon Riviere and Bleger.

Pichon Riviere was one of the first to define the concept of linking as “a complex structure comprising the subject, the object and their reciprocal interaction”. He differentiates the link from the object relationship and specifies that the link forms a pattern of behaviour that tends to repeat itself automatically in both the internal and external world with the other ( 1980 Linking theory Buenos Aires, Nueva Vision).

This author, among the first, is credited with defining the patient as the spokesperson for the anxieties of the family group. Berenstein and Puget also place the link, that of couple and family, at the centre of their clinical work and theory. Berenstein finally elaborates his conception of the family from the theories of the anthropologist Levy Strauss for whom the structure of kinship has specific links such as that of filiation, of the marriage alliance, with grandparents, between siblings. He adds another type of link, that as an emotional experience, then adding that there is a memory of the link…

According to this author, ‘memory transcends the self and can be said to be contained by others, just as the memory of others can be carried by the self…. The unconscious family structure and the set of ties are remembered through the persons of the kinship without being aware of what is evoked in the family discourse” (Berenstein 1990 p. 132 psicoanalizzar una familia . Paidos Buenos Aires ).  Also for Berenstein and Puget, as for the English, there is a shared unconscious basis of the couple.
Another significant author is José Bleger, who in his book “Family Group and Psychohygiene” defines the family as a syncretic group in which the psychotic part of the personality of its members is concentrated. To him we owe the concept of the repository that has given rise to many reflections at the family, institutional and clinical levels. According to this author, in every group situation a game of mutual exchange takes place. That is, there is a depositor and a depositary linked by a link that allows the transit of what is deposited.

Janine Puget also takes up these concepts by talking about how the undifferentiated dimension of the mind needs to deposit contents in persons or structures that are sources of security and stability, but this level in turn becomes a depository for other individuals. A reciprocal deposit is thus defined between depositors and depositaries.
In addition to these Argentinean authors, we must remember the extraordinary work of Jorge Garcia Badaracco on schizophrenic families and multi-family therapeutic communities. His conception of the maddening object (‘l’objeto enoloquecedor’) as a pathological alien object that infests the patient’s mind and parasites him from within was a precursor of many later studies.

According to Badaracco, in psychotic pathologies the parents, with their anticipated expectations, trap the child’s development in contradictory roles and force him or her into conflicting identifications. The future child patient will identify on the one hand with a pathological aspect of one of the parents and on the other hand structure false aspects of himself or herself, thus blocking his or her development. These identifications may be multiple and thus one dominant identification will keep another separate. Psychosis thus lies at the centre of a complex

family functioning and to solve it, it will be necessary to work with the whole family. In this extremely creative and complex panorama, I cannot forget the work of Roberto and Anna Losso who, in the Couple and Family Department of the Argentinean Psychoanalytic Association, develop work on psychoanalytic couple psychodrama and elaborate an interesting theory on myth and mythical transference. I must also mention the thorough and capable work of Ezequiel Jaroslawsky who founded and directs the journal Psychoanalisis y intersubjectividad ruffiotTo him we owe a great deepening of the thought of Renè Kaes, She has developed work on the scientific validation of psychoanalysis of couples with empirically objectifiable indicators of discrimination and indiscrimination according to the Ruffiot/Kaës model. Also Irma Morosini’s clinical work in understanding family histories through psychoanalytic psychodrama working behind the scene and in the expressive workshop (collage, puppets) objectifying the shared construction of one’s own affective family history. We also recall Eduardo Grinspon with his concept of the ‘clinical trap’ in borderline narcissistic problems and its implications as an analyst. Rodolfo Moguillansky made important contributions to family psychoanalysis on the emotional life of the family, the difference between bonding and affective relationship, love in the couple, etc.

The link and its development

 

Starting with Pichon Riviere’s idea, in more recent times great emphasis has been placed on the concept of ‘linking’ in relation to what unites family members. While Freud emphasises identification as a mechanism that links one individual to another even over several generations, for many family and couple psychoanalysts, the term ‘link’ is used in the sense of an unconscious structure that links two or more individuals. It differs from other concepts such as the object relationship that each of us has in our inner world and that originates in our childhood history. Already in 1985, Pichon Rivière, in his work Teoría del vínculo, emphasised the difference between linking and object relations. He wondered why we use the term ‘link’. He went on to explain that actually “in psychoanalytic theory we are used to using the notion of object relation, but the notion of link is much more concrete. The object relation is an internal structure of the link. One could say that the notion of object relation was inherited from atomistic psychology, whereas linking is a different thing that includes behaviour. Linking could be defined as a particular type of relationship with the object; from this particular relationship derives a more or less fixed conduct with the object that involves the formation of a pattern, a pattern of behaviour that tends to repeat itself automatically in both the internal and external relationship with the object’. In my opinion, in a certain sense this conception tends to act as a bridge connecting the person’s internal world to external reality. A pattern of repeated behaviour, if we understand what Pichon Rivière tells us correctly, forms a model that includes the two individuals sharing a relationship. This is why Berenstein (2001), one of Pichon Rivière’s Argentinean students, explains that if we recognise the existence of the link (vínculo) this implies a reflection on the subject, on the place of the other and the difference with the internal object and the notion of the external object; the link that is created, for example, between the members of a couple, even if it arises in the encounter from the unconscious reasons for the choice of that partner, is nevertheless a new element generated in the here-and-now at the origin of the encounter. Kaës writes of the link that is the more or less stable movement of representations and actions that unite two or more individuals for the realisation of some of their desires. Kaës (1994) distinguishes between the field of the object relation and that of the link in which the other is also the other in reality, different from the internal object. In this case, ‘the object of the relation is not only the object of projection but also the end of a process of psychic exchange and is therefore, as another subject, another subject that insists and resists insofar as it is the other’ (ibid., p. 27). Although with different characteristics, motivated by his work with families of psychotics, we cannot forget what Racamier says in this regard. He illustrates a relational pattern that he defines as enmeshment. Enmeshment refers to a mode of relating and a form of psychic functioning, one related to the other, characterised by a double interweaving ‘between the intrapsychic and the interactive, as well as between one person and another’ (Racamier, 1990, p. 62)

But there is certainly still much to be done in this regard. Indeed, how will we be able to distinguish the nature, form and quality of links? How will we be able to distinguish the mutual link that unites the members of a couple from the mutual projective identifications that also bind and characterise them? On this aspect, which is certainly crucial, many authors give different answers., As we have already written (Nicolò A. Lucarelli D. Families in transformation.     Nicolò A. Psycoanalisi y familia ), ties are in any case inter- and trans-subjective structures, involving the shared construction of two or more persons; they always have an acted side and it is therefore possible to observe them more in the actions, behaviours, non-verbal language or bodily manifestations of the members. Although they may be transmitted from one generation to the next, the links are the result of mutual adaptation between members. The atmosphere of the house, its furnishings, the photos that record the family over time are sometimes representations from which we can learn about the identity of that family and the links between its members. However, the element in which we can perhaps most readily read the quality and forms of ties within the family are above all the myths that the family passes down from generation to generation, and in which these traumatic aspects of its history tend to be condensed as a kind of elaboration in progress (Nicolò ). Of course, conceiving of things in these terms is revolutionary, but it can also cause consternation, since the object of the link is not to be found in the individual mind, but in interpersonal space. Kaës also points out that we may be faced with a psychic reality without a subject. This psychic reality, in order to acquire autonomy, inevitably develops between subjects (the psychic space of intersubjectivity) and also develops through subjects (the psychic space of trans-subjectivity). This perspective also challenges us conceptually, because it asks where the unconscious is in the context of the couple or the family, a question that many authors have already asked.

For the Italian model of the Society for Psychoanalysis of Couples and Families, the link  is also a central notion. The link between the partners, even if triggered by the encounter of unconscious motivations, is nevertheless a new element, (Nicolò)….produced at the origin of the encounter, even if independent from them it is able to condition them. At a pre-symbolic level, links are organised in domestic life between the partners of a couple and with each of their children. They are both modes of interpersonal relationships and forms of intrapsychic functioning, forged with split elements and unconscious agreements to defend against unprocessed experiences or traumas. “Links constitute an underlying canvas that characterises our interactions, a kind of stage on which actors perform. Usually the stage remains in the background, but sometimes, in certain pathological situations, it becomes the most important element of the scene. It is difficult to dissolve these ties because several members participate and the child, who grows up there, learns them’. (Nicolò 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005).

Currently, in the perspectives opened up by various authors, they all seem to agree on the importance of integrating two points of view: the first, that of the internal world, and the second, that which we observe in the interpersonal world.

This is particularly important when working with couples, where the other is the object of one’s own projection, but where the other cannot also be reduced to one’s own “representation more or less coloured by the imagination” (Berenstein, 2001).

In France

In French-speaking countries, work in these contexts takes into account the application of group analysis in great depth. The Collège de Psychanalyse Groupale et Familiale, linked to the journal Group (and later Groupal), refers to Didier Anzieu’s (1923-1999) work on groups. The French psychoanalyst introduced the concepts of ‘skin-Ego’ (1997) and ‘psychic envelope’ (1996), observing how couples and families develop their envelopes from a primordial object and thus create a common ‘I-skin’. According to the great French psychoanalyst, in the infant there is a double identification with the mother, on the one hand with the nipple she nourishes and on the other hand with the skin she contains. Similarly, the couple and the family develop their envelope from an object that is primordial to them; a common skin is thus constituted. This envelope opposes the service of mirror needs and dependency to the point of supporting illusions and fantasies, such as the fantasies of similarity and wholeness, which can interfere with the normal functions of the skin self by posing a threat to the differentiated functioning of individuals within the couple or family.

The other major school, linked to the Societé de Thérapie Familiale Psychoanalytique, counts among its members psychoanalysts such as André Ruffiot, Alberto Eiguer, Evelyn Granjon, Anne Loncan and Rosa Jaitin. Since 1998, together with others, they have published a journal with the evocative name of Le Divan Familial. This group offers a more composite vision that shares the concept of the family psychic apparatus with the work of René Kaës. In Kaës’ (1976) theorisation, the concept of the group psychic apparatus refers to the group as an individuated somatopsychic unit that is structured under the pretext and illusion of constituting a group formation of the unconscious. Other authors, including Ruffiot, Caillot, Decherf and Decobert, emphasised and developed concepts related to primary fantasies and the process of

intergenerational fantasies. Underlying this transgenerational pathway and the pathway of fantasies about the origins of the family itself, the authors hypothesise the existence of primary fantasies, which bring about differentiation between generations and sexes.

These fantasies mobilise the family’s ability to establish links. They also produce individuation and change, absorb trauma, process loss and bereavement. Interphantasmatisation indicates the “meeting place of each member’s individual phantasies” (Eiguer , 1983, Ital. ed. p.46) using a term of group-analytic derivation (Ezriel, 1986; Kaës, 1976; Anzieu, 1976).

As Ruffiot and Peeters tell us (Taken from Group No. 7 Vocabulary),
inter-family communication is an unconscious communication between family members that unfolds from the original psyche, from the child’s relationship with the mother and other family members, and thus with the family unconscious.

The first to use this concept was Ruffiot, but he himself describes its roots by taking up the work of Foulkes, who had observed the phantasmatic resonance of groups.

.  Ruffiot was a pioneer and innovator, he was among the founders of the ‘Institut de thérapie familiale et groupale et de la S.F.T.F.P. (Société Française de Thérapie Familiale Psychanalytique) en 1995, a society to which we largely owe the dissemination of family psychoanalysis in France For an overview of Ruffiot’s thought , you can read the work of  C. Joubert , E.Darchis   (2016)in the “Revue internationale de psychanalyse du couple et de la famille  -INTRODUCTION À LA REVUE “HOMMAGE À ANDRÉ RUFFIOT”

As can be seen in various ways, all scholars of psychoanalysis of couples and the family question what happens in the relationships between family members and the functioning of the family as a unit. While some psychoanalysts emphasise the phantasmatic functioning of the group, others, such as Eiguer, additionally take up the Freudian concept of identification as a mechanism of relationships between individuals. In his contribution (Families in Transformation), Eiguer describes the role played by identification within an intersubjective theoretical-clinical approach according to which the psyche of two or more individuals functions reciprocally in such a way that both influence each other at different levels. Each individual is influenced by the other’s psychic state and each variation in identifications plays an active role in these interchanges. The topic of transgenerational transmission of shame and humiliation is also dealt with by Pierre Benghozi, who introduces the notions of ‘inheritance of shame’ or ‘inheritance of betrayal’. Alongside these psychoanalysts, however, we must remember the pioneering work of Jean-George Lemaire, founder of Psyfa, one of the oldest French associations of psychoanalytic family therapy, and of the journal Dialogue. He observes how clinical work with couples can lead to the need to revise certain classical concepts of psychoanalysis. As a result, the emergence of particular manifestations defined as ‘appropriation’, almost of capture and splitting, which do not occur in other living environments of patients individually, led him to broaden the concept of identification to include the frequent emergence of images linked to very archaic group-type identification phenomena. He describes a ‘non-conscious space’ rather than an unconscious in which non-conscious images or other non-conscious sensory perceptions, but not repressed and non-real fantasies or organised scenarios, simply coexist with other phenomena of neuropsychological origin. We could say ‘primordial’ in that they probably find their origin in the early stages of neuropsychic development, when the different sensory systems are still undifferentiated. The narcissistic dimension and the primordial, almost pre-individual phases of the construction of the feeling of identity give rise, in love relationships, to a psychic agency: ‘We’.  Each retains traces of the initial ‘We’ of each individual and, at the same time, represents it in the couple link. A theoretical approach that takes into account the interpersonal and intergenerational dimension has fostered interest in a particular aspect of the real and phantasmatic structure of the family, that of fraternal ties and the way in which these are imprinted in inter- and transgenerational filiation links, in other words, in an imaginary, real and symbolic whole. Rosa Jaitin (2006), with regard to these notions, proposes the distinction between ‘fraternal complex’ and ‘fraternal link’. While the complex is based on the interpersonal and intergenerational ties created during childhood history, it should not be confused with these fraternal ties: its existence is independent of fraternal ties. Jaitin shows that the incestuous fantasy is a component of the fraternal complex, but reminds us that all human beings are permeated by the fantasy of fraternal incest, which is a universal fantasy beyond the reality of the fraternal link. The fraternal link refers us to another level: it foregrounds the relationships between the different sibling complexes and that particular link.  I want to end this quick mention of French psychoanalysts who have been pioneers in this field by recalling the great J.P.Racamier, not so much because he is linked to a specific school of family psychoanalysis, but rather for his discoveries on the functioning of psychotic families . It is to Racamier’s credit that he illustrated in an original and creative way a characteristic constellation of psychotic functioning, which he called the ‘anti-oedipus’.

The anti-Oedipus is a constellation that lies at the junction between the objectual and the narcissistic, between the individual and the familiar. It tends to oppose and counterbalance the drives and anxieties of the Oedipus, but above all it precedes it. It thus reveals itself to be both anti-Oedipal and ante-Oedipal. It is characterised by a relationship of narcissistic seduction whose aim is to maintain in the narcissistic sphere a relationship susceptible to result in an object relationship.

The aim of such a constellation, in its slow and ancient construction, founded from the origins of the family, is to prevent in advance against mourning and separation anxieties, to maintain the patient’s fusional omnipotence with the mother and to function protectively against excitations, external stimuli, growth impulses and Oedipal conflicts in particular. It ‘must prevent oedipal desires, the phantasmatic inscription of the primitive scene, the emergence of castration anxiety’ (Racamier ) and the anxieties triggered by differences between the sexes, between generations, between human beings.

 

In Italy

Continuing to look at European countries, I cannot overlook the intricate Italian situation, where the study of the couple and the family was very early.   A number of Italian associations were organised very early on, whose analysts were influenced by some ( Taccani et al ) at the College de Psychoanalyse familiale and others at the Argentine school of Berenstein, such as those who gathered around Armando Bauleo.  Giulio Cesare Zavattini (  2010 )      has over time developed publications and research in the field ,based on attachment theory.

Another group of psychoanalysts then created the Society for Psychoanalysis of Couple and Family (PCF). This group included psychoanalysts who had psychoanalytic training with children and adolescents on the one hand, (Lucarelli, Nicolò Norsa ) others (Tavazza, Trapanese , Saraò, Zavattini ) came from a systemic approach that was later abandoned.  Initially, these psychoanalysts had gathered, starting in 1992, around the journal Interazioni. Clinical and psychoanalytic research on the individual-couple-family, directed by Anna Maria Nicolò, The series of exchanges sparked off by the scientific debate promoted by the journal led to the first International Congress of Psychoanalysis of the Couple and the Family, held in Naples in 2000, thus providing an opportunity for practitioners from various nations to meet. The result was a further stimulus to interest in family research and clinics and encouragement for the future establishment of an international society.  A large part of this group was originally formed on the English Dicks model, recreated in Italy by the English psychoanalyst Andreas Giannakoulas within the Institute of Child Neuropsychiatry at the SAPIENZA University in Rome. Some of these analysts developed their own model over time, partially distancing themselves from the concept of collusion.

A strong influence in it stems from Meltzer’s and Harris’s conception, who, rethinking the Kleinian-Bionian hypotheses in an original way, propose explanatory hypotheses to link the development of the individual mind and that of the family.

The family is seen as a learning context of emotional modalities influenced by “the current modalities of the family educational group and its state of organisation” (Meltzer, …).

One of the tasks of the family is the containment of psychic suffering related to the individual’s growth. Connecting to Bion’s hypothesis on “learning from experience” (Bion, 1962) understood as a process of inner formation, within an individual as well as within each family Meltzer hypothesises a clash between procedures that aim to avoid, to evacuate frustration and those that aim to modify it, to make it usable. The task of modulating, containing and processing suffering is entrusted to thought.   In this Italian model ( Nicolo,Norsa 2019) of understanding and clinical work the family is seen as an internalised system of ties, it is regarded as the matrix of individual thought and identity (Nicolò.1989 ) it is characterised by specific interactive qualities and also by an intergenerational structure. At the phantasmatic level, the unconscious fantasies and basic anxieties of the family group are addressed by transpersonal defences, which are a collective product of the family members; whereas each family member can rely on individual defences that each has at his or her disposal. The focus of this approach is the study of the continuous and reciprocal interweaving between the intrapsychic world of each individual member and the interpersonal functioning of the family to which they belong (Nicolò, 1988, 1990). At the diagnostic and therapeutic level, this method observes, for example, the consonance or dissonance of the individual with respect to  common anxieties or collective group fantasies. Moreover, it brings to light each individual’s defences in the face of common conflicts or shared fantasies, and compares the individual’s defence against the interpersonal collective defence, as can be observed in particular in dream work, which in the family setting is an expression of both individual and family functioning . (Nicolò, 2000, 2006; Nicolò & Borgia, 1995). The multiplicity and simultaneous presence of several levels of functioning in the family and in the couple explain the diversity of the reactions acted out by the family, which constantly oscillate between the more undifferentiated and primordial levels, and the more differentiated, representational or symbolic levels.

The more undifferentiated levels can be read through the use of the body, somatisation and acting out. They can constitute the transpersonal level of the family, which is the place of primitive unconscious communication that is acted out or somatised, and which is also the place of transgenerational defences. These levels, present at the same time, impose the need for articulated and therapeutic responses, at different levels, thus obliging the analyst to measure himself not only in an asymmetrical relationship, but also as a member of that newly formed system composed of the family in connection with him. They also force therapeutic responses that are not only interpretation, but rather the use of metaphor to favour symbolisation and the narration of the family history

Great importance in the clinical work is given to myths, dreams and memories narrated in the family, but above all to the coordinated interactions in the family on a daily basis, known but not aware of, remembered in facts, in interactive habits, but not thought of where the fundamental constructs of psychic life are hidden and where unprocessed traumatic memories are transmitted and the repetition of relational rules learned unconsciously from other generations .

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