Treating the marital crisis with the two-marriage equation.

The technique the authors call"two-marriage therapy" (conjoint cotherapy by a married cotherapy team) has been developed to help the couple in a marital crisis confront the elusive nature of marriage, a being with self-images and unconscious deceptions, different from, but not separate from, the images and unconscious deceptions of the separate spouses. The key to the two-marriage analysis os discovering the limitations of cooperative relationships based on roles and expectations and the exploration of a mode of concern we term "coliberation". This paper attempts to show how the presence of a married cotherapy team facilitates this process and adds a significant salutary perspective on the marriage in conflict.