Treating Fused Couples

SUMMARY

Marital therapy with couples in which the partners are undifferentiated and highly fused entails attention to both individual and interpersonal dynamics. Individual structural problems such as insufficient sense of self, poor self-other differentiation, primitive defenses, and incomplete object constancy tend to co-occur with couples issues such as anxious attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and patterns of reactivity and explosive fighting. A model for dealing with fusion in couples is presented that demonstrates how constructs and techniques of object relations theory serve to inform and to enhance the practice of Bowenian systems therapy.