Married Life and its Vicissitudes: A Therapeutic Approach

127 Pages·2016·1.95 MB·English

by  Arturo Varchevker

MARRIED LIFE AND
ITS VICISSITUDES

MARRIED LIFE AND ITS
VICISSITUDES
A Therapeutic Approach
Arturo Varchevker
First published in 2016 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2016 by Arturo Varchevker
The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-78220-391-9
Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR vii
PREFACE ix
INTRODUCTION xi
CHAPTER ONE
Similarities and differences in marital relationships 1
CHAPTER TWO
External and internal migration in couples 13
CHAPTER THREE
Creativity or the absence of creativity in marital relationships 31
CHAPTER FOUR
The Oedipus myth and the Oedipus complex
in marital relationships 43
v
vi CoNTENTS
CHAPTER FIVE
Movements and vicissitudes in reconstituted
families and intermarriage 51
CHAPTER SIX
Abuse in marital relationships and domestic violence 67
CHAPTER SEVEN
Technique 79
CONCLUSION 93
REFERENCES 97
INDEX 101
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arturo Varchevker is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society,
where he developed and chairs the Psychoanalytic Forum. He teaches
in the UK and abroad, and his main area of interest in psychoanalysis
is internal migration and psychic change. He is a marital and family
therapist with a special interest in domestic violence and the impact of
migration.
vii

PREFACE
It gives me great pleasure to recommend this book by a very experienced
couple psychotherapist. Arturo Varchevker is also a psychoanalyst, and it
is particularly his long clinical experience with individuals, with couples,
and with families that shines through. He is also trained in working sys-
temically and in psychodrama, and the text gives abundant examples of
his capacity to think about any situation from the perspectives of his differ-
ent trainings, to try to find the most suitable angle from which to approach
any particular problem, and then indeed to use these different disciplines
together to think about and to treat his patients.
If the main enjoyment for the reader derives from the author’s over-
all experience, there is one particular focus that is original, and of real
interest to other clinicians and theoreticians, which is that of migration.
This is obviously a topic which Varchevker has spent much time and
imaginative energy contemplating, and, as well as being the particu-
lar theme of one of the chapters, it crops up regularly in virtually all
the chapters as one of the central lenses Varchevker uses consistently
to think about his patients and their dilemmas. He develops the idea
that migration is a central part of any and every life, starting with the
migration from womb to infant. In terms of couples, it is a fertile theme
to ponder how becoming part of a couple for the first time is a major
ix