Link psychoanalysis of couples and families

Domain I · Psychodynamic & depth psychology · Janine Puget, Isidoro Berenstein · 1976 · Buenos Aires

What it is

Psychoanalytic treatment in which the patient is the link itself: a couple, family or group is treated as "una entidad psicoanalítica analizable" (Puget 1995, p. 417). All members of the link attend together.

Format

• Format. Joint sessions with every member of the link under treatment (both partners, or the family group). From his earliest family work, Berenstein treated the setting as a contract fixing time and space conditions so that the whole group is present. Couple, family and individual settings each…
• Goals: describe the scenes the link produces in session; place the material across the intra-, inter- and trans-subjective spaces; identify the unconscious agreements and pacts and the four defining couple parameters (or, with families, the unconscious family structure); work with transference and…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• How change happens. A link is what is produced between two or more subjects who stay irreducibly other (ajeno) to each other. It is not the sum of two inner worlds, and it is not a screen for projections. Couples and families are organised by unconscious agreements and pacts that once gave them a sense of shared unity. Suffering appears when these agreements rigidify or fail, or when members defend against the…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• forcing disclosure. Working sign: the silence itself becomes speakable.
• interrogation that makes the session a deposition. Working sign: members pick up the thread themselves.
• one member colonising the sessions. Working sign: members can be separate and still in the session together.
• always picking up the more articulate member. Working sign: less flooding with anecdote, more staying with the scene.
• genealogical explanations that close the scene down. Working sign: history enriches the present instead of replacing it.

Problems the guide addresses

• Stuck: the same fight every week
• Link resistances
• "Tell us who is right": demands for a judge or for advice
• Overwhelm, escalation, violence and risk
• Non-adherence: missed sessions, absent members, lateness, fees
• Secrets, requests for individual contact, "briefing" calls
• Disclosed infidelity or a sudden revelation
• Ruptures with the analyst: "You're on her side"
• The analyst stuck in old schemes or in the same social world
• One member wants out, or separation becomes the outcome

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.