Editorial

I am delighted to be writing the editorial to this special edition of the Journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis focusing on relationship endings, particularly as 2021 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the implementation of the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, legislation that provided a route out of marriage without having to prove that a “matrimonial offence” had been committed. The ending of the commitment that comprised two intertwined lives, soaked through with romanticism and love, hope and societal approbation, calls for the creation of new ways of working for the clinician. The seven new articles contained within this issue illustrate, from different practices, countries, and orientations, the how and why of helping couples and families face the unimaginable; to shake themselves loose of the history that binds them and garner enough agency to conceive a new life as two separate individuals with no shared couple space between them, with the exception of their children. This issue starts with Avi Shmueli’s description of the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service (DSCS), based at Tavistock Relationships, a timely psychoanalytic article describing the extension of “normal” couple psychotherapy, taking into account the catastrophe on many levels that affects many couples faced with separation. Shmueli begins with a reminder that separation and divorce is a product of a couple’s original unconscious dynamic that can no longer contain them. Whilst contemplating therapeutic technique, we are reminded of the intense pressure facing therapists trying to support two people dealing with unprecedented and simultaneous levels of change, the “who am I, where am I, what have I done and where and how do I live” questions that assault couples caught up divorce. The couple’s projective system, defending against reality, exerts intense pressure both on them and their therapist, and countertransference can batter the clinician just as the splitting of blame, shame, and responsibility ricochets between the separating partners, demanding an availability of mind that will not appeal to all couple therapists. Shmueli and his team in the DSCS work to promote deeper understanding and containment to counter couple distress as these huge changes are absorbed. Clinicians symbolise the hope that life will continue beyond the unimagined losses that separating couples and their families find themselves caught up in. The second article moves to California, the family law system in the United States, and Dana Iscoff’s way of working with narcissistically organised, highconflict, separating and divorcing couples. Such couples will be identifiable Couple and Family Psychoanalysis 11(1) vii–x