Clinical consultation with highly conflictual couples

The contribution, through the presentation and discussion of a clinical case, illustrates an approach to the couple's consultation considered a form of specific clinical intervention. The basic elements that define it conceptually are the focus on the relational nature of the crisis and the prevailing attention to the bond of the couple, observed in its generational articulation. In this perspective the primary objective of the consultation lies in the unveiling of the psychological dynamics underlying the crisis/problem, ie a re-reading of the symptoms of distress and suffering that allows access to the meanings and to a more complex and articulated knowledge of the relationship problems and their nature.This way of thinking and carrying out the clinical consultation with the couple is based on a specific theoretical-methodological system and qualifies as a form of "collaborative assessment" that is characterized by the need to build a real sharing between the partners of the problem and therefore of the ways to deal with it, so that the couple can together take an active position and a joint planning to cope with the difficulties. The challenge of a couple's clinical counseling is therefore to build a shared working environment, participated constructively by both partners. This aspect assumes an even more significance since usually the characteristic of the presented problem sees the two opposing partners and actors of a more or less manifest conflict.