Link psychoanalysis of couples and families

1. Introduction

Version followed: the Buenos Aires (Río de la Plata) school of link psychoanalysis (psicoanálisis de las configuraciones vinculares) as set out by Janine Puget and Isidoro Berenstein in Psicoanálisis de la pareja matrimonial (1988) and Lo vincular (1997), read through their later revision (Berenstein 2004, Devenir otro con otro(s): ajenidad, presencia, interferencia; Puget 2009, "Teoría de la técnica") and Berenstein's family work (1976, 1981). René Kaës is used only as a related French strand and is labelled as such. The 1988 and 1997 books were not available online; their concepts were verified through Puget's own papers (1995, 2009) and through secondary texts that quote them with page numbers. [uncertain: page-level detail of the 1988/1997 books]

This is a psychoanalytic theory of the link (vínculo) with a clinical method, not a manualised therapy. There is no session protocol, no fixed number of sessions and no worksheet. What follows gives the clinical moves the authors actually describe, and marks as [synthesis] anything derived from them. [source: Puget 2009; Cesio 2000]

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.

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 other's otherness by reducing them to an internal object. The analyst's interventions act as interferencias: they disturb repetition, so the link can register what the other's presence imposes and produce something new (lo nuevo), rather than only repeating the infantile past. [source: Cesio 2000, pp. 6–9; Berenstein 2004 via Elvira, pp. 191–194; Puget 2009, pp. 124–125, 140–142]

2. Framework

The authors describe no formal phases. The structure below is a practical sequence built from the setting rules and clinical aims they do describe. [synthesis, except where tagged]

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. [source: Berenstein 1968/1970 via Ni 2017, p. 228] Couple, family and individual settings each have their own specificity and metapsychology, and they coexist. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 113, 121] Typical practice is one session a week, 50–60 minutes, open-ended, often lasting months to years. [uncertain: frequency, length and duration are customary River Plate practice]

Phase A: Consultation and setting the frame (about 1–3 joint interviews)

Goals: hear the demand, and who brought it and why now; see how the link presents itself in the room; decide whether link work is indicated; agree the contract (who attends, time, fee, absences). [synthesis]
Couples who consult "ya tienen en la mente que el cambio es posible" (Puget 2009, p. 141). So treat the consultation as already a move within the link. [source]
Move on when: all members accept the joint frame; the request can be put in terms of the link, not only "fix him/her"; there are no contraindications (see section 5). [synthesis]

Phase B: Unfolding the link (the bulk of treatment)

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 interference, otherness, presence and imposition. [source: Puget 2009; Cesio 2000; Puget & Berenstein 1988 via PUC-Rio, pp. 62–64]
Move on when: members can bear the other's non-shared sector without treating it as betrayal; repetitive scenes loosen; something not foreseen by either history appears in session (new arrangements, new meanings). [synthesis grounded in Cesio 2000, p. 7; Berenstein 2004]

Phase C: Renegotiation and ending

Goals: renegotiate parameters (daily life, shared life project, sexuality, exclusivity) as the life cycle demands; consolidate the link's capacity to make new agreements; end, or separate with as little destructiveness as possible. [synthesis; the life-cycle renegotiation point applies Puget & Berenstein's parameters as summarised in PUC-Rio, p. 65]
Ending criteria (synthesis): conflicts can be worked through inside the link rather than acted out; each member can hold both the logic of the One and the logic of the Two; the demand that brought them has changed form. Separation can be a legitimate outcome of link work, not a failure. [synthesis]

3. Guiding principles

The link is the patient. Address the couple or family as an analysable entity, not as two individual cases seen together. [source: Puget 1995, p. 417]
Three spaces, each with its own origin. Material is intra-subjective (drive, fantasy, object relations; one-way), inter-subjective (two-way; agreements, pacts, shared fantasy) or trans-subjective (the social macro-context). Do not derive the inter- or trans-subjective from early object relations. [source: Cesio 2000, p. 6; Puget 2009, pp. 121–122]
Link is not object relation. The other is a real, present subject, not only an internal object. Do not interpret the partner only as a projection. [source: Puget 1995 (the paper's thesis); Puget 2009, p. 142]
Otherness (ajenidad) is irreducible. Something of the other can never be known or represented. Treat clashes with that unknown as part of the link, not as a mistake to be corrected. [source: Cesio 2000, p. 7]
Presence counts. The other's presence, a juicio de presencia, causes effects of its own, both pleasure and pain. Work with what happens because they are both here. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 124–125; Cesio 2000, p. 9]
Imposition. Through their otherness, the other imposes things and displaces each member from their identity positions. Do not reduce every change to identification. [source: Puget 2009, p. 124; Berenstein 2006 via Elvira, pp. 18, 24]
Two kinds of transference work. Run two tracks: repetition of the infantile, and interferencia, the new that the encounter produces. Classical technique tried to remove interferences; here you leave room for them. [source: Berenstein 2004 via Elvira, pp. 191–194]
Do not reduce the present to the past. Resist applying "los viejos esquemas conocidos" to new situations (Puget 2009, p. 132). Describe and give shape to the present before you bring in history. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 126, 132]
The logics of the One and the Two operate together. "No se puede ser Uno en el Dos" (Puget 2009, p. 125). Keep both each member's singularity and the couple's "we" in view. [source]
Unconscious agreements and pacts organise the link. Acuerdos create a felt shared unity. Pactos acknowledge a sector of each self that is not committed to the link and must be tolerated. [source: Puget & Berenstein 1988 via Cesio 2000, p. 7]
Four defining couple parameters. Daily life together (cotidianidad), the shared life project, sexual relations and the monogamous tendency. They come from the social order and are recorded psychically. Use them to map where the link hurts. [source: Puget & Berenstein 1988/1993 via PUC-Rio, pp. 63–64]
The social is in the room. Values, crises and the clash between "a world under construction" and "a world already built" enter the session. Work with them. Do not treat them as noise. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 131–134]
Describe before you explain. "un primer paso consiste en describir más que explicar" (Puget 2009, p. 139). [source]
Every intervention is an interference. You are an other in the session, not a neutral screen. Use your presence to keep the inter-space "activo y vivo" (Puget 2009, p. 142). [source]
Obstacle is not resistance. Some impasses are obstacles that call for new paths, not resistances to be dissolved by interpretation. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 127–128, citing Lewkowicz]
No advice, no single "reality." Watch for the pull to advise, to adjudicate one version of reality, or to use common sense. These neutralise the interwoven subjectivities. [source: Puget 1995, p. 422]
Not everything is meant to become conscious. Part of the link remains unconscious by its very condition, including a couple's untranslatable secret. Do not chase total transparency. [source: Puget 1995, pp. 418–419]
Families: an unconscious family structure with four terms. Father, mother, children, plus a fourth term: the maternal family's representative (the avuncular), who links the family to exogamy and the incest prohibition. [source: Berenstein 1976/1981 via Ni 2017, p. 228; Saubidet 2022, pp. 756–757]
Even-handedness between members. Keep comparable access for each member and avoid alliances. [synthesis; implied by principles 1 and 16]

4. Intervention inventory

The authors frame technique as a set of positions and moves, not exercises. Puget lists the basic intervention types as describing, explaining and interpreting. She treats all of them as interferences. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 114, 142] Step sequences below are operationalisations of their descriptions. They are [synthesis] unless a step carries its own source tag. All example language is illustrative.

4.1 Setting the link frame (encuadre vincular)

Purpose / when: At the start of treatment, and again whenever the frame is tested. The frame is the space-time in which the link's unconscious structure shows itself. [source: Berenstein 1968/1970 via Ni 2017, p. 228]
Steps: (1) State who the patient is: "the two of you / the family as a group." (2) Agree time, frequency, fee, and how absences are handled. (3) Make it explicit that you do not hold separate individual sessions or keep secrets from one member. [synthesis; see 5.6] (4) Expect the frame to be attacked or longed against: patients in a link setting can miss individual sessions, and the reverse. [source: Puget 1995, p. 421] (5) Treat every frame event (lateness, an absent member, a phone call to you) as link material.
Example language (illustrative): "In this work the one I listen to is the relationship between you, so I'll see you together. If one of you can't come, we'll talk about it at the next joint session."
Watch for: one member who wants to "brief" you privately; a family that brings only the identified patient. Working sign: the frame becomes something the members discuss, not only something they obey.

4.2 Opening the consultation and locating the demand

Purpose / when: First interviews. You find out who wants what from whom, and why now. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Ask an open question addressed to both, and let them decide who speaks first. (2) Note the order, the alliances and what each takes for granted. (3) Ask what each one expects from the other and from you. (4) Before the end, give back a short description of how they presented the problem together (see 4.3).
Example language (illustrative): "How can I help the two of you?" (Krakov's own opening in a published first couple interview was close to this, but it is Krakov's, not Berenstein's or Puget's. [source: Krakov 1999]) "I notice you each brought a different problem, and both of you look at me while you say it."
Watch for: the request to name a guilty party, or to "fix" one member. Working sign: by the end, they can put the problem as something that happens between them.

4.3 Describing before explaining

Purpose / when: In any session, as the first move with new or confusing material. Description already involves choices and gives the scene a shape it can be seen in. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 139–140]
Steps: (1) Reconstruct the scene as it unfolded in the room: who said what, in what order, with what effect on the other. (2) Leave out causal claims ("because your mother..."). (3) Offer the description to both and see what each adds or rejects.
Example language (illustrative): "When you mentioned the weekend, you went quiet and turned to the window, and then you started explaining the schedule to me."
Watch for: describing that turns into a covert verdict. Working sign: members correct and extend the description, and the scene becomes visible to them as theirs.

4.4 Selecting what to take up

Purpose / when: Every session. Couples and families produce too much at once, and which thread you pick is already a decision with consequences. [source: Puget 2009, p. 140: "Cómo se hace la selección es ya del orden de una decisión"]
Steps: (1) Ask yourself for what purpose (para qué) you would intervene: what repetition should this interrupt? [source: Puget 2009, p. 140] (2) Prefer material that shows the link working in the room over reports of past events. (3) Rotate whose material you pick up, so you don't make one member the permanent object. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "Of everything said today, I want to stay with the moment when 'we' turned into 'you'."
Watch for: always picking up the more articulate member. Working sign: less flooding with anecdote, more staying with the scene.

4.5 Entering the scene and taking a position

Purpose / when: When the session repeats a fixed scene. Puget describes entering the scene and positioning oneself in it, then drawing the conflicts out from that position. [source: Puget 2009, p. 140]
Steps: (1) Notice the role the scene assigns you (judge, rescuer, audience, the absent parent). (2) Name your place in the scene openly, instead of acting it out. (3) Use that place to show the conflict that needs a third party.
Example language (illustrative): "I seem to have been given the role of referee here. What would happen between you if I didn't take it?"
Watch for: confessional self-disclosure, which is not the point; name the position, not your private feelings. Working sign: the scene stops needing you in the assigned role.

4.6 Pointing to more, not plugging gaps

Purpose / when: When you are tempted to ask a question. Puget warns that a question can serve only "tapar una fisura" (to plug a crack). An invitation to expand should instead show the couple or family that more can be said. [source: Puget 2009, p. 142]
Steps: (1) Before asking, check whether the question relieves your discomfort with a silence or gap. (2) If it does, mark the gap instead of filling it. (3) Address the opening to the link, not to one person.
Example language (illustrative): "Something stopped just now, and neither of you went on. There may be more there than either of you has said."
Watch for: interrogation that makes the session a deposition. Working sign: members pick up the thread themselves.

4.7 Locating material in the three spaces

Purpose / when: Throughout, but especially when a complaint keeps going round in circles. It tells you whether a scene belongs mainly to one member's inner world, to what they make between them, or to the social context, which shapes what kind of intervention fits. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 121–122; Cesio 2000, p. 6; Krakov 1999 citing Puget 1988–89]
Steps: (1) For a recurrent conflict, ask yourself three questions. What does each bring from their history (intra)? What do they produce together that neither brings alone (inter)? What from work, money, migration, gender norms or politics is pressing on them (trans)? (2) Intervene at the level that is being overlooked. (3) Do not translate inter- or trans-subjective material into a single member's pathology.
Example language (illustrative): "This argument sounds like both your families, but also like something you invented together that neither family ever had. And it gets worse in the weeks your contracts are up for renewal."
Watch for: collapsing everything into individual history, which is the commonest error. Working sign: members stop saying "it's because you're like your father" and start describing what they do.

4.8 Mapping the four defining couple parameters

Purpose / when: Couples, in assessment and whenever the link feels "empty" or unrecognisable. The parameters are daily life together (cotidianidad), the shared life project, sexual relations and the monogamous tendency. They are socially given and have a psychic record, visible in the couple's agreements and pacts. [source: Puget & Berenstein 1988/1993 via PUC-Rio, pp. 63–64]
Steps: (1) Listen for each parameter, without running through it as a checklist: the rhythms of meeting and missing each other; the shared language and life project; sexuality; exclusivity as a symbolic preference. [source for each gloss: PUC-Rio, p. 64] (2) Find which parameter has stalled or broken. When a project is lost, partners may not know what they lost with it. [source: PUC-Rio, p. 64] (3) See whether a parameter has become a "dominant narrative" that blocks renegotiation over the life cycle. [source: PUC-Rio, p. 65, applying Puget & Berenstein] (4) Interpret the unconscious agreement that sustained it (4.9).
Example language (illustrative): "Since the children left, you each still describe the same plan, but neither of you speaks of it as yours any more."
Watch for: turning the parameters into norms that the couple "should" meet. Working sign: the couple begins to renegotiate one parameter explicitly.

4.9 Working with unconscious agreements (acuerdos inconscientes)

Purpose / when: When the couple or family acts as if they shared one mind on some topic and conflict arises at its edge. An agreement creates a felt shared unity. It is made of a part of each self plus an affective envelope that binds them. [source: Puget & Berenstein 1988 via Cesio 2000, p. 7]
Steps: (1) Find the topic on which they never disagree, or on which disagreement is unthinkable. (2) Describe the unity they seem to share there. (3) Show what each one contributes to it and what each gains. (4) Interpret what happens when one member steps out of it: the breach experienced as betrayal.
Example language (illustrative): "You've both agreed for years, without ever saying so, that money is never discussed. Now that one of you has raised it, it feels less like a question than an attack on the two of you."
Watch for: exposing the agreement too fast, which can produce "angustia de vincularidad" (link anxiety). [source: Cesio 2000, p. 7] Working sign: they can talk about the agreement as something they made, and could remake.

4.10 Working with pacts and the non-shared sector

Purpose / when: When one member's separateness (a friendship, an inner life, a past, a wish) is treated as a threat. The pact recognises "un sector incompartible de cada yo" that is not committed to the link and that both must tolerate. [source: Puget & Berenstein 1988 via Cesio 2000, p. 7] (The label "zona de no compartir" is commonly attributed to the 1988 book. [uncertain: wording not verified in the original])
Steps: (1) Spot demands for total sharing ("we have no secrets") and attacks on privacy. (2) Name the sector that is not shared as a structural feature of any link, not a fault. (3) Help each member tell what can be shared from what cannot without the link being lost. (4) Hold in mind that part of the link stays unconscious by its nature. [source: Puget 1995, p. 419]
Example language (illustrative): "It seems that if there's any part of her you don't have access to, it feels to you as if there's no 'us' at all."
Watch for: confusing tolerating the non-shared with colluding in a destructive secret (see 5.6). Working sign: less surveillance and checking, and separateness spoken of without panic.

4.11 Link interpretation (as a hypothesis)

Purpose / when: Once a scene has been described and recurs. Puget calls interpretation "un acto muy complejo": a hypothesis held with some certainty, sometimes predictive. She warns that interpreting identifications sets aside "lo puro alter del otro", the other's sheer otherness. [source: Puget 2009, p. 142]
Steps: (1) Build the hypothesis about what the link does, not what one mind does. (2) Include what each member contributes. (3) Offer it as a hypothesis both can test against their experience. (4) Do not stop at "you see him as your father." Add what in the actual other does not fit that picture.
Example language (illustrative): "My impression is that the fight protects you both from noticing how far apart you've drifted. As long as you fight, you're still in contact."
Watch for: one member using the interpretation as a weapon against the other ("See, the therapist says you..."). Working sign: both recognise their part, and the interpretation produces new material, not just agreement.

4.12 Double-track work: transference and interference

Purpose / when: Throughout. Berenstein distinguishes transference as the unfolding of the infantile world and of object relations from transference as the place where something emerges that was not there before. Interference "descompleta": it is an excess, not a lack. [source: Berenstein 2004 via Elvira, pp. 191–194] Puget: transference is what is carried from one context to another; interference is what the other's presence displaces. [source: Puget 2009, p. 125]
Steps: (1) For a striking reaction, whether between members or towards you, ask both questions. What is being repeated? What is new here and cannot be traced back to the past? (2) Interpret the repetition where it is clear. (3) Leave room for the new: name it, give it words, think it through together, without forcing it into a past pattern. [source: Berenstein 2004, p. 193, "dejar un lugar"; Elvira's paraphrase] (4) Treat interferences between members and from you as material, not as contamination.
Example language (illustrative): "Part of this is old and familiar to you. But what he did today isn't something your father ever did, and I think that's exactly what threw you."
Watch for: Berenstein judged an interpretation of the type "you feel I am now your mother, your father" to be incomplete on its own. [source: Elvira, citing Berenstein] Working sign: members report surprise rather than "here we go again."

4.13 Working with otherness (ajenidad) and presence

Purpose / when: When a member is shocked that the other is not who they thought, through betrayal, a confession, or a revealed wish. Puget reads the upheaval after a confessed infidelity as tied more to "el descubrimiento traumático de la alteridad del otro" than to the act itself. [source: Puget 2009, p. 141]
Steps: (1) Ask yourself what the revealing member wanted to interrupt or produce, and leave the answer open; Puget lists several possibilities, such as wanting to be heard. [source: Puget 2009, p. 141] (2) Name the shock as meeting the other's otherness, not only as loss of the ideal. (3) Help each one describe the other as other, not as a failed version of the expected partner. (4) Work with the effect of presence: what it is like to hear this with the other in the room. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 124–125]
Example language (illustrative): "What seems hardest isn't only what happened. It's finding out that she has a whole region of herself you didn't know about."
Watch for: using "otherness" to excuse harm. Acknowledging alterity is not the same as condoning violence or deceit (see 5.4). Working sign: curiosity about the other appears alongside the pain.

4.14 Working with imposition (imposición)

Purpose / when: When a member changes, or resists changing, under the sheer fact of the link (living with this other, in this family), and the change cannot be explained as identification. Imposition comes from the link and leaves a new mark. In the analytic setting it "dará cabida a ambos sujetos" (makes room for both subjects), and that is where something new can arise. [source: Berenstein 2006 via Elvira, p. 24] The other "necesariamente las impone y al hacerlo descoloca de posiciones identitarias" (Puget 2009, p. 124).
Steps: (1) Notice complaints such as "I'm not myself with him" or "since we married I've become someone else." (2) Describe what the link requires of each, as opposed to what each brings. (3) Separate imposition that is structuring (the link's rules, the other's existence) from imposition as domination. [synthesis] (4) Help each member take up the new mark as their own, or refuse it.
Example language (illustrative): "Living with her asks something of you that nobody in your life asked before. It isn't that you've copied her; the two of you together have made you into this."
Watch for: confusing imposition with coercive control (5.4). Working sign: changes are described as becoming "other with others" (devenir otro con otro(s), Berenstein 2004), not as loss of self.

4.15 Holding the One and the Two: personal topics in a joint session

Purpose / when: When a member brings a "personal" issue (work, a parent's illness, a symptom) and the other looks uninvolved, or when the "we" swallows each one. When such matters are spoken about, the others often discover they are involved, though sharing does not mean thinking or feeling the same. [source: Puget 2009, p. 125]
Steps: (1) Let the individual material unfold in front of the other. (2) Ask how it lands on the other and on the link. (3) Mark where each stays singular. (4) Do not convert the session into individual therapy with an audience. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "You've been listening to her talk about her mother. Where does it touch you, and where is it simply hers?"
Watch for: one member colonising the sessions. Working sign: members can be separate and still in the session together.

4.16 Bringing the trans-subjective (social) into the session

Purpose / when: When conflicts are shaped by social change, values, migration, economic crisis, gender norms or institutions. Puget discusses a family scene about a beggar to show that the session must look beyond the family. She also describes the clash between a world in permanent construction and one already built. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 131–135]
Steps: (1) Ask which social discourses each member is speaking from. (2) Name value clashes as clashes of context, not as pathology. (3) Notice that you live in the same changing present as your patients and may lack ready-made tools. [source: Puget 2009, p. 132] (4) Avoid moralising in either direction. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "You're each defending a different idea of what a father is, and neither idea is simply yours. They come from very different worlds that now share one kitchen."
Watch for: the analyst's own values entering as "common sense." [source: Puget 1995, p. 422] Working sign: less blame, more recognition of the pressures they share.

4.17 Present first, history second

Purpose / when: When members (or you) rush to explain the present by the past. Puget's sequence: describe the challenge, give it figurability, then incorporate history. [source: Puget 2009, p. 126]
Steps: (1) Stay with what is happening now until it can be pictured. (2) Only then ask how it echoes each family of origin. (3) Return to what the present adds that the past does not contain.
Example language (illustrative): "Before we go to your parents, let's stay with what happened here, between the two of you, just now."
Watch for: genealogical explanations that close the scene down. Working sign: history enriches the present instead of replacing it.

4.18 Making communication itself the object (early Berenstein)

Purpose / when: When the problem is how the members talk: crossed messages, information passed on through a third party. Berenstein proposed "objetivar en la sesión el tema de la comunicación": making communication an explicit topic of the session. His early Klein-influenced work classified communication levels as oral, anal and genital. [source: Argentine conference paper summarising Berenstein (aacademica 000-067/293), p. 231] [uncertain: this is the pre-vincular version; the later theory does not give it the same weight]
Steps: (1) Point out, in the room, how a message travels (who tells whom, through whom). (2) Name the effect of that route on the receiver. (3) Link it to the agreement it protects (4.9).
Example language (illustrative): "I notice that everything for your father goes through your mother first. What would happen if you said it to him directly, here?"
Watch for: sliding into communication-skills coaching, which is outside this model. [synthesis] Working sign: messages become more direct in session.

4.19 Using your own presence and countertransference

Purpose / when: Always. You are both the receiver of intra-subjective transference and a member of the session link, and these are different positions. [source: Puget 1995, p. 417] Your real presence is an obstacle to the fantasy of self-sufficiency. [source: Puget 1995, p. 422] In a family mourning a son, Berenstein reports that the analysts themselves felt an overwhelming, paralysing sadness. [source: Berenstein 1981 via Elvira, p. 20]
Steps: (1) Register what you feel and which role the link is pushing you into. (2) Ask whether it repeats something (transference) or is the effect of meeting this link (interference). (3) Use it to inform a description or interpretation, not to disclose. (4) Check for pulls to advise, take sides or impose one reality. [source: Puget 1995, p. 422]
Example language (illustrative): "There's a heaviness in here today that makes it hard to think. I wonder if that's what being in this family has been like since he died."
Watch for: your own membership in the same social world (shared crises and values) blinding you. [source: Puget 2009, p. 132; synthesis] Working sign: your feeling, once used, opens material rather than closing it.

4.20 Families: reading the unconscious family structure and the fourth term

Purpose / when: Family treatment. For Berenstein, the family structure is unconscious and is known only through its forms of expression. It arises from the exchange between two family groups joined by the conjugal alliance, and it includes a fourth term, the representative of the maternal family (the avuncular), alongside father, mother and children. [source: Berenstein 1970/1976 via Ni 2017, p. 228] The fourth term's place shifts across generations. It must accept exclusion and ends up as "testigo de la alianza" (witness of the alliance). [source: Berenstein 1976 via Saubidet 2022, p. 757]
Steps: (1) Map who stands in the fourth-term position (maternal grandparents, an uncle, sometimes an institution). [partly synthesis] (2) Notice whether that term is excluded, over-present, or fused with the couple, which points to endogamy and blurred generations. (3) Describe in session how the family's rules (who may marry, leave, inherit, know) organise the scene. (4) Interpret the unconscious rule, not individual "faults."
Example language (illustrative): "Every decision in this family seems to need your grandmother's approval, as if this marriage never quite left her house."
Watch for: turning structure into a static diagram; it is read only through living expressions in session. Working sign: generational and family boundaries become sayable.

4.21 Families with a psychotic member: unconscious pacts that maintain the structure

Purpose / when: Families in which one member's psychosis seems to hold the structure in place. Berenstein described unconscious "enloquecedor–enloquecido" (maddening–maddened) pacts that maintain the family structure, and a breakdown of the paternal function that blurs generational and sexual differences. [source: Berenstein 1988 congress paper, as reported by Mendilaharsu 1989] [uncertain: secondary report; technique not specified there]
Steps (synthesis): (1) Treat the identified patient's symptoms as also expressing the family structure, without lifting individual and psychiatric care. (2) Describe how roles of "the mad one" and "the sane ones" are distributed and kept up in session. (3) Interpret the pact cautiously, alongside psychiatric care.
Example language (illustrative): "Whenever Ana starts to make sense, someone in the room changes the subject back to her medication."
Watch for: blaming the family, and decompensation. Coordinate with the treating psychiatrist. [synthesis] Working sign: other members begin to bring their own material.

4.22 Related French strand (Kaës): working with denegative pacts

Status: This is Kaës, not Berenstein or Puget. Use it as a complementary lens only.
Purpose / when: When a couple or family seems jointly organised around not knowing something. Kaës's pacte dénégatif is "un acuerdo icc. sobre lo icc." (an unconscious agreement about the unconscious): repression, denial or disavowal shared in order to keep the link organised. Unconscious alliances draw their material from co-repressed, co-denied or co-disavowed representations. [source: Romero, aacademica, p. 155, citing Kaës]
Steps (synthesis): (1) Notice topics on which every member goes blank together. (2) Describe the shared silence before naming its content. (3) Expect strong link anxiety, because the pact holds the group together.
Example language (illustrative): "Every time we get close to the year you moved, the whole family starts talking at once."
Watch for: forcing disclosure. Working sign: the silence itself becomes speakable.

5. Handling problems

The sources address some of these problems directly (tagged [source]). The rest is [synthesis]: standard couple and family psychoanalytic practice made consistent with the principles above.

5.1 Stuck: the same fight every week

Puget locates a core resistance in the analyst's and patients' tendency to understand the present only through what is already known. [source: Puget 2009, p. 126] Response: go back to describing the scene in the room (4.3). Look for what is new in this week's version (4.12), and enter the scene to name the role it gives you (4.5).
Ask whether this is an obstacle, which calls for new paths, rather than a resistance to be interpreted away. [source: Puget 2009, pp. 127–128] Shift level (intra/inter/trans, 4.7) and check which defining parameter is jammed (4.8). [synthesis]

5.2 Link resistances

"Resistencias de vincularidad" go together with defences against the other's otherness and against the new. [source: Cesio 2000, p. 1] Signs: each insists the other is "just like" a parent; partners demand total sharing; a member treats every difference as an attack.
Response: interpret the defence against otherness, not just its infantile root (4.11, 4.13). Pace exposure of agreements to the level of link anxiety the couple can bear (4.9). [synthesis]

5.3 "Tell us who is right": demands for a judge or for advice

Puget names the analyst's temptation to give advice, to confront patients with a single "reality", and to use common sense, which neutralises the interwoven subjectivities. [source: Puget 1995, p. 422]
Response: name the role offered (4.5). Describe how each version of events serves the link. Decline the verdict without disqualifying either account. (Illustrative: "If I decided who's right, one of you would lose a version of events you need. I'm more interested in why you each need yours.") [synthesis]

5.4 Overwhelm, escalation, violence and risk

[synthesis; not addressed in the sources] If sessions escalate, slow down. Return to description, and allow each to speak in turn while the other listens. Do not interpret while either member is flooded.
Screen for intimate partner violence and coercive control, including in brief separate contacts at assessment. This is a deliberate exception to the joint frame, made for safety. Where there is coercive control or fear of retaliation, joint link work is contraindicated until safety is established; refer for specialised help. "Otherness" and "imposition" must never be used to frame abuse as a link phenomenon both share.
Suicidality, self-harm or child-protection concerns override the frame. Apply standard risk assessment and local safeguarding procedures, and arrange individual or psychiatric care as needed.

5.5 Non-adherence: missed sessions, absent members, lateness, fees

Berenstein's frame is a contract meant to secure everyone's presence. [source: Berenstein 1968 via Ni 2017, p. 228]
Response [synthesis]: agree beforehand whether you meet when a member is absent. A common option is to hold the session and treat the absence as a presence in the room ("What is it like to be here without him?"). Never let it become a covert individual session. Treat lateness and unpaid fees as link material: whose job is it to pay, to remind, to arrive? A recurring pattern often expresses an unspoken agreement about the treatment itself.

5.6 Secrets, requests for individual contact, "briefing" calls

Patients in link settings may long for individual sessions. [source: Puget 1995, p. 421] Every couple holds a secret that cannot be put into words, as part of the link itself. [source: Puget 1995, p. 418]
Response [synthesis]: state a policy at the start. Information given to you outside the session may be brought back into the joint space, and you do not hold one member's secret against the other. When a member calls, keep it brief and say you'll raise the contact at the next session. Distinguish the untranslatable private sector, which must be tolerated (4.10), from an active concealment that distorts the treatment (an ongoing affair, hidden debt, violence). The latter calls for a frank conversation about whether joint work can continue.

5.7 Disclosed infidelity or a sudden revelation

Puget asks what someone who confesses an infidelity wants to interrupt or produce. She locates the upheaval mainly in the traumatic discovery of the other's otherness. [source: Puget 2009, p. 141]
Response: work as in 4.13. Hold off on decisions about separation until the shock is metabolised; the injured partner's rage and the confessing partner's motives both belong to the link. [synthesis for the pacing advice]

5.8 Ruptures with the analyst: "You're on her side"

[synthesis] Take it as both a transference and a real event in the session link. Check whether you have in fact picked up one member's material more often (4.4), and whether the link has placed you as the ally that one partner lacks. Name it openly in joint session. Adjust even-handedness without over-correcting. Accept the analyst's "interference" as part of the field rather than defending neutrality. [grounded in Puget 2009, p. 142; Berenstein 2004]

5.9 The analyst stuck in old schemes or in the same social world

The temptation to apply "los viejos esquemas conocidos" is great, and analyst and patients live through the same present transformation. [source: Puget 2009, p. 132]
Response [synthesis]: in supervision or self-review, list the familiar formulations you keep reaching for. Ask what in this couple does not fit them. Notice where you share the patients' social crises (economic, political, migration) and so cannot see them.

5.10 One member wants out, or separation becomes the outcome

[synthesis] Separation is a legitimate result of link work. Shift the aim to separating with the least destructiveness possible, and to a workable co-parenting link where there are children. Offer separate referrals afterwards if needed. Do not turn joint sessions into a mediation forum unless you have agreed that change of frame explicitly.

5.11 Severe individual psychopathology inside the link

Berenstein's family work started from psychosis and the unconscious family structure, and he reported pacts that maintain madness in the family. [source: Ni 2017; Mendilaharsu 1989] Response [synthesis]: run link work alongside individual and psychiatric treatment, never instead of it. Coordinate with the other clinicians. Watch for the family using the identified patient's crisis to stop the joint work.

5.12 Children and multigenerational sessions

[synthesis; not addressed in the sources] Match language and session length to the children's age. Use play or drawing for young children if you are trained in it. Protect children from adult sexual or financial content: hold adult-only sessions for those topics, and agree this format openly with the family.

Sources

Sources

Further reading (not drawn on; known through the sources above) [uncertain at page level]

Puget, J. & Berenstein, I. (1988). Psicoanálisis de la pareja matrimonial. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Berenstein, I. & Puget, J. (1997). Lo vincular: clínica y técnica psicoanalítica. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Berenstein, I. (2004). Devenir otro con otro(s): ajenidad, presencia, interferencia. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Berenstein, I. (1976). Familia y enfermedad mental. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Berenstein, I. (1981). Psicoanálisis de la estructura familiar: del destino a la significación. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Kaës, R. (2009). Les alliances inconscientes. Paris: Dunod. (related strand)

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