Couples and Family Psychoanalytical Therapy Models

Elisabeth Darchis (Bois-Colombes, France) et Denis Mellier (Lyon, France)

Although mother-baby and parent-baby therapies have been prevalent in Europe for the past ten years (Doumic, Bick, Lebovici, Cramer, Stern, Golse, Palacio, Daws), prenatal-prenatal PCFT therapies which emerged from Bion and Winnicott’s work and, from group therapists are much more recent. Since 1990 in France, other European countries, in Quebec (Carel, Darchis, Maffre, Mellier, Arpin) these therapies are making inroads and solidifying their theories. Several generations are present during psychoanalytic prenatal therapy: the parental couple with the baby in utero or with the newborn, the grandparents as well brothers and sisters. In this work the family-subject in its wholeness is considered rather than favoring the parent or the child.

This neonatal group contained by the therapeutic frame fosters the psychic journey that is necessary for the construction of the new family group. This includes the essential regression and the indispensable uptake of ancestral material. The reconnections with experiences relating to ancient groups, the fantasmatic resonance of internal groups, the predominance of non-verbal modes of communication, the sharing of dreams and of associations, the shedding of light on non-reciprocal marital and family collusions…will “. re-.immerse ” the future parents and the family group towards their roots and towards the original fusion. This will allow them to restructure the ancient material and to construct progressively the group’s memory of this new generational link. In this new setting, the psychic family apparatus is tested by redistributing the investments, bringing the conflicts up to date, even the basic foundations of the unconscious family life structure. This anchorage into the shared psyche will open the road to support and to construct a new family envelope, a real psychic crib to greet the infant.

Early treatment access to the fledgling family group by mental health resources in conjunction with family psychoanalysts (PFT) is most effective in this prenatal family crisis since it is sensitive and fertile thus open to restructuring.

In this structuring passage, from one generation to the other, psychoanalytic therapeutic containment assists in construction-deconstruction in perinatality. This is particularly so in the interplay of psychic intergenerational transmission, more specifically in the transformation of catastrophic infantile experiences, primitive family suffering, intergenerational trauma, ancestral shame or family secrets that can return as a trans generational après coup.

The symbolic and elaborative work of the group permits an escape from the generational confusion that occasionally distorts the familial links through a telescoping of the generations. In perinatality, the PCFT work in a prevention mode in that they assist the family group out of the familial trauma and confused parenting and towards a generational differentiation.

Thank to the introjections of the therapeutic containment, parents once again delight in their dreams of a new family, one that can finally construct its own family psychic apparatus and its own family romance.