Reflections

 

Working with Couples - an existential exploration

9 February 2008

By

Estelle Phillips

 

 

Kerry Spence and Odelia Carmon had very different ways of presenting and expressing themselves as to how they worked with couples. Both, however, agreed on most, if not all of their ideas and aspects of couple counselling, emphasising the differences and the challenges of working with couples as opposed to working with a single client.  So, what is the existential experience of couple counselling, how did Kerry and Odelia explore this at Saturdays forum?

On reflection, I, a psychodynamically trained couple counsellor who works existentially, would suggest that the goals of existential therapy are to assist clients to be honest and truthful about themselves, both in relation to themselves and in relation to the world around them. Using this awareness hopefully facilitates an understanding on how clients can move forward in the world. The method involves approaching events that shake us, client and therapist alike, but phenomenologically.

As Kerry and Odelia pointed out, the couple therapist not only works with the dimensions of existence of the individual, but also with the dimensions of existence of the couple: working self to self, self to other, the experience of self in-being-in-relation-with-the other and the experience of self-being-in-relation-with-the couple. Both Odelia and Kerry spoke about the importance of being-in-the-world (Dasein) of the clients. They both worked with, sometimes struggled with, the individuals and their unique ways of being-in-the-world, never forgetting, but rather exploring the unique way all individuals, including themselves, related to Dasein as a couple.

Both found times when it was necessary to separate partners, allowing the individuals space to explore their own ways of being, and then discussing these explorations and understandings with both partners present.
Kerry and Odelia gave homework and direction to the couples to help them learn the skills that help in dealing with conflict and fighting. Kerry, by asking the question, “Is this how you would fight with your best friend?” suggesting one way of handling fighting was for each individual in the couple to imagine they were fighting with their best friend rather than their partner.

Odelia observed great benefits to the couple if the individual listened and really heard the other’s pain without defending or interrupting, allowing each to experience or try to experience the other’s experience of being-in-the-world. This was given as homework. Personally, I find greater benefit when this is done in the safety of the session at first and then later as homework.

Both work towards each individual recognising and respecting themselves and the other, and in turn, respecting and recognising what they each own in the relationship. Exploring the existential anxieties related to who was responsible for happiness and unhappiness allowed for greater clarity. Kerry gave the metaphor of the dirty laundry basket, brings questions of not only who owns it but also to the exploration of the noema and the noesis of the dirty laundry and then the cleaning of said laundry.

Kerry and Odelia emphasised the importance of not getting caught up in the story, but rather on tuning into the music behind the words. Being conscious of how an individual sits, noticing body language and the messages it sends, even the clothes they choose to wear can be great tools in giving a deeper meaning to the connections, the disconnections, the hopes and the fears of the individual as well as the couple.

Although both presenters briefly introduced two case studies, I would have liked to have spent more time hearing how they actually worked existentially with these clients. For example, how much exploration into the couple’s reason d’etre was explored or how did their histories become the “shapers” of their experiences?

Kerry and Odelia both emphasised the need for bracketing and the importance of supervision. This enabled them to be far more authentic in relation to all the dynamics of the therapeutic process.

I would suggest that it is in the shared exploration of our clients’ unique being-in-the-world and the shared experience and understanding of the Noema and the Noesis and unique struggle that brings the realisation that both the individual and the couple are Free to Change, Free to Grow and Free to Choose. (This freedom does indeed bring recognition of the responsibility and consequences that comes with these choices.)

Kerry shared with us her struggle, while Odelia spoke of feeling the magic.
Husserl believed that for us as human beings, consciousness is always consciousness of some thing, in that the basic interpretation of consciousness is to experience the world in terms of things and how we relate to these things. He focussed on two fundamental issues: the notion of intentionality as the basis to all mental experience, and the noematic and noetic as the “shapers” of our experience.

Couples come to therapy with shared hopes and fears; with their struggles and their magic. Through and with consciousness of her struggle Kerry reached the magic, and with and through consciousness of the magic Odelia reached and experienced the struggle and vice versa. Odelia and Kerry highlighted how working phenomenologically (Dasein, intentionality and the Noema and Noesis) is the struggle and the magic of the existential experience of working with couples.