Maladaptive couple processes are a core feature of couples in distress and are among the best predictors of marital decline (Gottman, Coan, Carrera, & Swanson, 1998; Lebow, Chambers, Christensen, & Johnson, 2012). The likelihood of therapeutic success is maximized when the therapist and the couple focus on this pathological dance, in which the emotional music generally matters more than the words.
The noted couple therapist and researcher Susan Johnson put it this way: “The novice therapist has to learn not to get lost in the pragmatic issues and the content of interactions, but to focus instead on the process of interaction, and how inner experience evolves in that interaction” (2008, p. 129). Virtually all experienced couple therapists agree (Nielsen, 2017a). According to this view, much couple behavior is an emergent property of individual interactions, where what emerges is more than the sum of the individual contributions.
Over many years working with couples (Nielsen, 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2019a), I’ve found that certain metaphors are effective and memorable in clarifying and normalizing the experience of couple distress. By likening events in therapy to other, more familiar, experiences, I am able to build an alliance in a setting that otherwise might seem distressingly foreign and threatening.
Metaphor: Lessons
Early in therapy, I often compare conjoint couple sessions to taking lessons in music, sports or dance. I say, “If you are learning piano, tennis, or ballroom dancing, it’s not sufficient for you to tell your teacher or coach what you do. He or she has to see you do it, in order to help you improve.” For this reason, having couples talk to each other while I observe and try to help is the starting point for repairing and strengthening their relationships. I refer to this as Couple Therapy 1.0.
After couples are talking to each other, the next crucial step is to focus on their maladaptive dance. All schools of couple therapy do this, though in different ways. The key is not to get bogged down in weekly discussions of “the problem du jour.” In most cases, problem solving will have to wait until the process improves.
While this focus makes logical sense to most clients, many have trouble with the idea that a “system” has “emergent properties” (here, destructive and amplifying ones) that can’t be blamed entirely on one person. The following metaphors can help clients grasp the systemic nature of their problems.
Metaphor: Chemical reactions
To explain how both partners usually contribute to their problems and to reduce mutual blaming, I compare the partners to two harmless, colorless reagents in separate beakers that, when mixed, become drastically altered: perhaps becoming explosively hot, ice cold, or foul smelling. One of the reagents might think, “I was just fine before: not hot, cold, or smelly. This sudden change, in which I don’t even recognize myself, must be due to that other damn chemical!” This metaphor powerfully illustrates how group process is not reducible to individual behavior and is experience-near for individuals who are feeling blamelessly victimized by their partners.
Metaphor: Hungry diners and unresponsive waiters
Escalation commonly consists of one or both partners speaking increasingly loudly, impatiently, and aggressively, perhaps while nagging, guilt-tripping, or swearing. These ineffective attempts to influence a partner tend to occur and intensify when the partner appears unresponsive. Therapists can normalize these counterproductive behaviors by explaining them in systemic terms. One metaphor I frequently use is of a hungry person calling for an unresponsive waiter. At first, the diner waits respectfully. Then he tries to signal non-verbally. Then he calls out in a calm voice. Finally, he resorts to yelling. Often, it is more accurate to characterize both partners as hungry diners, even though one may superficially appear to be an unresponsive waiter.
Some metaphors are especially useful for explaining and highlighting certain psychological phenomena that are otherwise difficult to understand.
Metaphor: Firefighters battling forest fires
Just as escalating pursuit can seem appropriate in some situations, so can flight. Withdrawal becomes more comprehensible and acceptable if one remembers that firefighters facing a raging forest fire must sometimes retreat temporarily. Helping clients share their reasons for retreating frequently deepens the treatment.
As discussed by Summers (2013):
“The linguists Lakoff and Johnson (2003) have argued convincingly that metaphor is not just a figure of speech used primarily by poets and fiction writers, but a way of thinking built into our conceptual system. Metaphor is ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (p. 5). While we do not notice it, metaphor saturates our language . . . ‘time is money,’ . . . ‘I am feeling down,’ ‘she is overflowing with joy,’ ‘I am drained,’ ‘she is a knockout’ . . . To use Lakoff and Johnson’s most discussed illustration: ‘Argument is war’ shows that we think of argument the way we think of war: trying to gain ground, defending our position, seeing the other’s position as indefensible, [etc.]. . . [W]e do not simply register experience, but routinely think of our immediate experience in terms of other events and experiences.”(p. 69)”
Summers’ metaphor of “argument as war” could sadly be applied to many couples seeking our help in therapy. My metaphor of couple therapy as resembling “lessons” is much more hopeful. More generally, following Lakoff and Johnson, we can appreciate that metaphors are not just figures of speech; they saturate our speech and our thinking. And some metaphors are especially useful for explaining and highlighting certain psychological phenomena that are otherwise difficult to understand. The metaphors discussed in this piece attempt to bring to life concepts that most of us find challenging, all related to how human experience is frequently co-created, non-linear, and emergent, rather than simply the direct result of one person acting on another. Of course, this insight is no news to this audience and was central to the family therapy movement (e.g., Minuchin, 1974). However, since intimate partners routinely misidentify their problems as coming from a recalcitrant or malevolent “other,” the metaphors discussed here are especially useful for the therapist who is addressing co-created, circular causation. By showing that “it takes two to tango” (another metaphor), these images—blameless, inert chemical reagents; hungry diners and unresponsive waiters; retreating firefighters—can help therapists point to the couple’s interpersonal process as the problem, in what Michael White (2007) termed an “externalizing conversation.”
Arthur C. Nielsen, MD, is clinical associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, and on the faculty of The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and The Family Institute at Northwestern University. He is an Allied Mental Health Professional member of AAMFT.
REFERENCES
Gottman, J., Coan, J., Carrera, S., & Swanson, C. (1998). Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 5-22.
Johnson, S. M. (2008). Emotionally focused couple therapy. In A. S. Gurman (Ed.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy (4th ed., pp. 107-137). New York: Guilford Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lebow, J. L., Chambers, A. L., Christensen, A., & Johnson, S. M. (2012). Research on the treatment of couple distress. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 38, 145-168.
Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nielsen, A. C. (2016). A roadmap for couple therapy: Integrating systemic, psychodynamic, and behavioral approaches. New York: Routledge.
Nielsen, A. C. (2017a). From couple therapy 1.0 to a comprehensive model: A roadmap for sequencing and integrating systemic, psychodynamic, and behavioral approaches. Family Process, 56, 540-557.
Nielsen, A. C. (2017b). Psychodynamic couple therapy: A practical synthesis. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 43, 685-699.
Nielsen, A. C. (2019a). Couples in the digital age: An integrative systemic-psychodynamic-behavioral model of couple therapy. In P. Pitta & C. Datchi (Eds.) Integrative couple and family therapies: Treatment models for complex clinical issues. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Summers, F. (2013). The psychoanalytic vision: The experiencing subject, transcendence, and the therapeutic process. New York: Routledge.
White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York: W.W. Norton.
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