When Conflict Becomes Power: Couple Therapy, Aggression, and Sexuality from a Gestalt Perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an interpretation of couple therapy through the lens of Gestalt Therapy and Gestalt Sexology, focusing on the relationship between aggression, sexuality, and power dynamics. Drawing on field theory, the couple is understood not as a closed system consisting of two individuals, but as a relational phenomenon embedded in a social, cultural, and historical background that shapes patterns of contact, conflict, and desire.

The article explores how patterns of dominance present in the social field can be introjected into the couple relationship, transforming difference into a power struggle and conflict into a confrontation aimed at achieving supremacy, self-protection, or control over the other. Accusatory, devaluing, confluential, and competitive dynamics are understood as creative adjustments through which the couple attempts to regulate a field perceived as threatening.

Drawing on contributions from Gestalt Therapy and Gestalt Sexology (Pizzimenti, Bellini), the paper proposes a reinterpretation of sexual aggression as a vital function of differentiation, contact, and transformation. Aggression, supported by sexuality understood as the capacity for care, interest, and openness toward the other, can shift from a force oriented toward dominance into a creative energy capable of sustaining conflict without destroying the bond. Similarly, sexuality supported by aggression maintains the differentiation necessary for an encounter to take place without turning into fusion or loss of self.

Couple therapy thus becomes a clinical and political space in which the cultural backgrounds shaping the relationship can be made visible, fostering a shift from relational models based on dominance and supremacy toward forms of contact grounded in reciprocity, freedom, and the creativity of the encounter.

KEYWORDS: couple therapy, field theory, sexual aggression, Gestalt Therapy, fusion-differentiation-connection, Gestalt Sexology.

INTRODUCTION

Historically, couple therapy has moved between two broad approaches: models that prioritize the autonomy of partners and those that emphasize connection. The first approach is reflected in Murray Bowen’s systemic theory (1978), which highlights the need for self-differentiation to prevent emotional fusion. The second is grounded in attachment theory, particularly Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy (2008), which views a healthy couple relationship as one capable of establishing a secure and responsive bond.

Both perspectives have made significant contributions to our understanding of couples, yet they retain an implicit tension between two needs that are often treated as separate: the need to be oneself and the need to belong. The Gestalt perspective, by contrast, proposes examining how these two movements emerge simultaneously within the process of contact.

The founders of Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, 1951) offer a different view: autonomy and connection are not opposing poles but alternate within a figure-ground process. Autonomy and dependence represent a false polarity, as do adjustment and creativity, male and female, aggression and sexuality, and so on.

Within the process of contact, withdrawal is just as important as engagement (Resnick, 2016); neither can exist without the experience of the other. Similarly, asserting oneself and establishing one’s boundaries are necessary to experience genuine intimacy and growth.

This offers an original perspective that does not ask partners to choose between closeness and independence, but rather to learn to dance to the continuous rhythm that alternates between the need for connection and the need for differentiation. Within this process, the couple learns that the other person is free: they are not what we would like them to be, nor can they be reduced to our expectations. When this happens, vitality fades. This perspective allows us to embrace the complexity of relationships, recognizing the fluidity of movement between intimacy, separation, and self-assertion.

This paper examines the political as well as the clinical significance of couple therapy and explores its foundations in Gestalt Therapy.

WHEN THE SOCIAL ENTERS THE INTIMATE: THE COUPLE AS A FIELD OF POWER

According to field theory, couple therapy cannot limit itself to working with the individual partners; it must also consider the entire context in which the couple exists. Kurt Lewin, a pioneer of this theory, stated that “an individual’s behavior is a function of the total field in which they find themselves” (Lewin, 1936), emphasizing the importance of observing both figure and ground. Applied to couples, this principle makes it clear that working with relational dynamics also requires examining the cultural and social field that influences them. For millennia, this field has been strongly shaped by a patriarchal culture in which “cultural power structures determine roles, expectations, and relational dynamics” (hooks, 2000). Conflicts and difficulties between partners are therefore not isolated phenomena, but expressions of broader patterns rooted in society.

In couple therapy, we encounter couples who have been trapped in power struggles for years. As Michela Murgia argues, those who enter into power relationships inevitably reproduce broader patterns (Murgia, 2016), highlighting how transforming a couple relationship requires awareness of the prevailing model of power.

In therapy, this means shifting the focus from the individual couple to the cultural and social field in which it exists, working not only with the figures but also with the rules and norms that shape them. Change thus becomes a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, in which the couple is understood as a node within a broader field and relational well-being is built by recognizing and transforming the underlying power dynamics. In this sense, transformation is not merely a clinical objective but a political one: it represents a radical challenge to the model of power that structures relationships themselves.

The influence of patriarchal culture on sexual difficulties and the everyday lives of couples is explored in Gestalt Sexology: An Imperfect Manual for Continuing the Sexual Revolution (2022).

As the book explains, patriarchy is not a matter of “gender differences,” but rather a model of power management that shapes a couple’s habits, practices, thoughts, aspirations, and feelings. Caring for a newborn, managing household responsibilities and financial resources, and negotiating individual space can all become sources of tension. Every conflict brings with it the temptation to make a unilateral adjustment, in which one partner sacrifices their own self, freedom, creativity, and potential to avoid breaking up the relationship. Unfortunately, the results are often disastrous, as emotional distance, resentment, emotional withdrawal, and frustration increase.

This management of power defines particular conflict strategies and lays the foundations for a model of fusion, which is why, as the Resnicks state, “Two become One and then there are none” (Resnick, 2016; Parlett, 2018). The problem, therefore, is not difference itself, but the attempt to erase it.

As a reflection of patriarchy, differences become internal power struggles in which one perspective must prevail over the other. Power no longer circulates to foster mutual growth or the exchange of perspectives; instead, it serves to assert who is right and to maintain control, reproducing on a micro level the logic of patriarchal society. The model of power that couples introject is what P. Philippson calls “One-Power Therapy,” in contrast to “Two-Power Therapy,” in which different perspectives can emerge and the couple can move flexibly between one partner’s wishes and the other’s (2020).

The task of clinical work is to uncover this invisible background of introjects that restricts couples’ freedom to determine their own lives. Only by recognizing the power structures permeating the relationship can conflict be transformed into an opportunity for shared growth, creating a space in which differences are no longer threats but resources. In this sense, therapy becomes a radical intervention in the cultural field surrounding the couple: it deconstructs dominant models and opens up possibilities for genuinely reciprocal relationships. For a deeper exploration of the impact of patriarchy on sexuality, couples, and families, see the interview with Bellini and Pizzimenti in Figure Emergenti (Bellini & Pizzimenti, 2025), or the article by Bellini and Magarelli examining the relationship between power and sexuality (2024).

A field perspective is essential to clinical work.

The social, cultural, and economic changes that have taken place over the last century, driven by feminist struggles, the sexual revolution of the 1970s, and queer movements challenging gender roles and identities, require clinicians to reflect on the changes couples are experiencing. One of the issues most frequently brought to therapy is a lack of sexual desire, particularly among couples who have been together for many years. Sexuality and couple relationships continue to be shaped by dominant cultural introjects rather than by a process of deconstruction and discovery (Pizzimenti & Bellini, 2022). An increasing number of couples and individuals are coming to therapy seeking support in exploring non-monogamous relationship structures.

For clinicians, this means continually updating their approach. Couple therapy must now address not only the figure but also the relational and cultural field, deconstructing outdated models of power and accompanying couples toward possibilities for shared and authentic growth.

WHEN THE GROUND BECOMES FIGURE: POWER DYNAMICS WITHIN THE COUPLE

The ways in which couples manage conflict do not emerge in a vacuum; they are learned within their social and cultural environment. When this field is organized around dominance, competition, and control, conflict is also likely to be experienced as a power struggle in which the goal becomes being right, prevailing over the other, or defending oneself against them.

The dynamics described below can therefore be understood as creative adjustments to a relational background shaped by dominance. The task of therapy is not to eliminate these dynamics, but to make them recognizable and create the conditions in which the couple can experiment with different ways of engaging in conflict. When aggression is once again supported by sexuality, understood as a function of contact, curiosity, and openness toward the other, conflict can shift from a battlefield to a space for differentiation, negotiation, and mutual growth.

a. Accusatory communication

Typical statements include: “You only think about yourself,” “You always reject me,” or “You never do any housework.” In these cases, projection may be a common mechanism. Instead of speaking in the first person (“I feel lonely,” “I miss you,” “I’m tired”), one partner attributes to the other what they are experiencing internally.

Effect: Distance increases because the other person feels attacked and responds defensively, creating an escalation.

Relational symptom: The couple becomes trapped in an accusatory back-and-forth that prevents intimate contact.

b. Devaluing or contemptuous attitudes

Examples include sarcastic smiles, a scornful tone, and statements such as “You’re worthless” or “You’re ridiculous.” Deflection and retroflection may become the predominant mechanisms. Anger is neither acknowledged nor expressed directly. Instead, the couple shifts attention away from the conflictual exchange of differing perceptions and experiences toward a battle fought through sarcasm or contempt.

Effect: Contempt protects against contact with vulnerability, preventing it from emerging and being seen: “If I despise you, I don’t risk asking for something and being rejected.”

Relational symptom: The mutual sense of worth erodes, making it increasingly difficult to remain in the relationship with permeable boundaries.

c. Power struggles

Pattern: Who is right, who is in charge, who wins. Couples often become trapped in dynamics of confluence or deflection, in which mutual influence is no longer important; what matters is being right. Each partner fears losing themselves in the relationship and becomes rigid in an attempt to defend their identity.

Effect: The encounter becomes a battlefield rather than a space for exchange.

Relational symptom: The relationship is reduced to a hierarchy of who is above and who is below, rather than becoming a dialogical “we.”

d. Family or couple introjects

Introjects involve uncritically adopting cultural or family rules about how a couple or family should function in different areas of life, including domestic responsibilities, social relationships, professional life, and leisure time.

Examples include: “During the first few months, only the mother should care for the baby”; “A real man must not show weakness”; “Being a couple means being monogamous”; or “Men earn the money and women do the housework.”

Introjection is a form of interruption of contact through which the couple adopts rules, traditions, or expectations as if they were their own, without checking them against their present experience. Rather than making a conscious choice, the partners simply repeat: “That’s how things are done.”

The underlying need may be security, belonging, or recognition from one’s family of origin or cultural environment. It may also involve the freedom to find one’s own way of approaching parenthood, sexuality, and the distribution of roles.

Effect on the couple: One or both partners may feel constrained, inadequate, or frustrated, despite “doing the right thing.” They lose the opportunity to explore what genuinely nourishes them as a couple and as individuals. As in the other cases, introjection is not inherently “wrong”—traditions can also provide support—but it becomes an interruption when it prevents creative contact with the present.

In summary, a Gestalt couple therapist does not focus on the content of arguments, but on the process of contact: how each partner protects themselves by interrupting contact, and how this gives rise to relational symptoms such as accusations, contempt, and power struggles. Through phenomenological awareness, the couple can open up to new possibilities for encounter. The therapist supports new forms of contact in the here and now, for example by pausing the interaction and asking: “What are you feeling right now as you say that?” or “Can you tell them that while looking them in the eyes, speaking from your own experience?”

FROM DOMINANCE TO RECIPROCITY: AGGRESSION AND SEXUALITY IN THE PROCESS OF CONTACT

Having clarified the figure-ground process and how power dynamics can emerge within a couple as a reflection of a social background based on dominance, we can now explore two fundamental functions of human experience: aggression and sexuality. These are primary movements of contact and underpin growth, creativity, desire, and the capacity to transform the relational field (Pizzimenti & Bellini, 2022).

Human beings are driven by two fundamental forces that support their growth: aggression and sexuality. From a Gestalt perspective, aggression is a boundary function that helps us discern, destroy what cannot be assimilated, explore, and allow difference to emerge. Saying “I am different from you,” expressing a need, disagreeing, asking for space, or asserting opposition are all necessary movements to prevent an encounter from turning into fusion. Without differentiation, authentic contact is impossible: the possibility of meeting the other arises precisely from recognizing their otherness.

Sexuality, by contrast, represents the drive toward contact, closeness, and the possibility of creating something new through an encounter with another person. It is not limited to the genital dimension, but encompasses every creative movement through which a person enters into a relationship with the world: desire, care, planning, generativity, artistic expression, and the capacity to feel part of something that extends beyond one’s individual boundaries. From this perspective, orgasm is the experience of no longer needing boundaries and feeling part of something that moves us and makes us feel connected.

Aggression and sexuality are therefore not opposing poles, but mutually supportive functions within the process of contact.

Aggression supported by sexuality

When aggression emerges against the background of sexuality, it loses its character of dominance and destructiveness. Conflict is no longer aimed at prevailing over the other, but becomes an opportunity to encounter difference while maintaining the bond.

Sexuality, understood as the capacity for interest, curiosity, and openness toward the other, allows aggression to remain within a relational field. It makes it possible to say “no” without destroying, to assert one’s boundaries without turning them into barriers, and to sustain the tension of difference without resorting to submission or control.

In this sense, sexual aggression represents the possibility of remaining within conflict without turning it into warfare: a force that allows the couple to influence and transform one another without erasing their differences.

Sexuality supported by aggression

Similarly, sexuality needs aggression to avoid turning into fusion or loss of self. Aggression keeps desire alive by sustaining separation, choice, and the possibility of encountering another person who is genuinely distinct from oneself.

When individual boundaries are erased in an attempt to preserve the relationship, contact loses its vitality. Sexuality supported by aggression, by contrast, makes an encounter between separate individuals possible—individuals who can desire one another precisely because they are not identical.

Within a couple, aggression and sexuality are therefore organized through a continuous figure-ground movement. When conflict emerges, sexuality remains in the background as an element of care, interest, and recognition of the other. When closeness emerges, aggression remains in the background as a function that protects differentiation and keeps desire alive.

Couple distress arises when one of these two functions is excluded. Aggression without sexuality can turn into a power struggle and domination; sexuality without aggression can turn into fusion and a loss of boundaries.

For this reason, when a couple brings a sexual symptom into therapy—such as a lack of desire, rejection, or difficulty with intimacy—clinical work does not focus exclusively on sexuality as the figure. Instead, it explores the relational background in which sexuality takes shape: how the couple manages difference, conflict, power, and the possibility of asserting oneself without losing the bond.

This perspective also profoundly changes how the therapist’s role and the goals of couple therapy are understood. If the problem lies not in the symptom itself but in the way the field organizes contact, the therapist’s position must also change.

FOUR FOUNDATIONS OF GESTALT COUPLE THERAPY

1. No predetermined goals or models to follow: self-regulation

Gestalt couple therapy represents an epistemological departure from couple therapy models based on attachment (Johnson, 2008), differentiation (Bowen, 1978), or partners’ communication (Gottman, 2015). It does not follow a predefined protocol or a fixed therapeutic path. Its purpose is not to heal wounds or restore equilibrium, nor does it set specific goals such as promoting autonomy, communication, or connection between partners, although these may naturally emerge as benefits or become part of the therapeutic process.

This means that the therapist works with these aspects only to the extent that a need for them emerges during therapy, through a process that is co-created rather than governed by a theory of “healthy functioning.” The therapist neither interprets the situation from the outside nor guides the couple toward a predetermined destination, but participates in the field while supporting phenomenological awareness.

In this sense, therapy does not aim to “make the relationship work,” but to make visible how the couple is organizing itself. Perls stated that the only possible goal within a session is an increase in awareness (Perls, 1965). Change then occurs spontaneously through organismic self-regulation (Bosco, 2025; Bellini, 2025; Pizzimenti, 2025).

The therapist does not work to ensure that the relationship succeeds, but supports the couple’s self-regulation, which may sometimes lead to separation. By interrupting habitual interruptions of contact and supporting the vital impulse, a space opens up from which a new relational configuration can emerge spontaneously. This change may lead toward greater union, but it may also lead toward separation.

Supporting a couple’s self-regulation is very different from applying intervention protocols or pursuing goals established in advance. It requires the ability to tolerate uncertainty throughout the process, moving the therapist away from the throne of the expert and placing them on an equal footing with the clients.

Equality in this context does not mean that therapist and clients are “the same,” since they have different responsibilities, knowledge, and backgrounds. Rather, it means that they relate as equals. The therapist does not possess some superior knowledge of the couple’s experience. Their task is to explore, broaden, and clarify the figure the couple brings into the session through phenomenological reduction and observation.

This involves the principle of inclusion: the professional is part of the field, not a detached researcher, and therefore puts their own experiences at the service of the emerging figure.

2. The symptom as a creative adjustment: supporting the original intentionality

Within this perspective, in which the couple’s therapeutic process is always the result of a new act of co-creation, the clinical focus shifts from content to the process of contact: how the couple interrupts, regulates, or supports the encounter in the here and now.

The symptom is not an error in the system, but a creative solution that organizes the field at a particular moment. In the Gestalt understanding of psychopathology, symptoms are viewed as creative solutions through which intentionality emerges—that is, the spontaneous movement people need in order to grow. Eliminating symptoms without supporting the vital impulse behind them therefore impoverishes the couple.

Change is not a goal in itself, but an effect of increased awareness and the reactivation of figure-ground movement.

To understand this shift in perspective, imagine a plant growing beside a wall. To adapt to its environment, the plant bends and stretches toward the available opening through which light enters. It cannot change the wall, so it reshapes itself in response to existing conditions.

As it grows, however, its roots push into the soil and may even crack the concrete or shift stones, thereby changing its environment to create more room for life. The crooked growth or the cracked wall represents the symptom: it is not an error, but the plant’s creative attempt to stay alive, find nourishment, and maintain contact with the light.

Gestalt intervention therefore does not aim to dismantle symptoms. Rather, it provides the support patients need to discover new creative adjustments that come at a lower cost.

The therapist does not seek to eliminate the symptom, but to understand it within its phenomenological context: What does it protect? What unrecognized need does it preserve? At what point in the contact cycle has movement been interrupted?

When a person experiences their needs and perceptions as welcomed and acknowledged, the symptom loses its rigidity.

If we were to work simply to eliminate the symptom, we would lose sight of the direction in which the person is moving and of what they are already doing to address the problem.

Couple therapy becomes a space in which partners are invited to suspend the war and make room for recognizing one another, including those aspects they find most difficult to accept. As the perceptual field broadens to accommodate the other person’s diversity, the possibilities for dialogue increase.

Consider situations such as a couple arguing every day about housework or jealousy; one partner withdrawing behind walls of silence and avoiding any discussion of what hurts them; or a couple who have not had sexual intercourse for months or years. Silence, arguments, jealousy, and the absence of genital sexual activity are not necessarily “problems to be solved,” but rather “solutions” to a difficulty that therapy needs to bring into focus. Rigid, symptomatic behaviors are the best forms of communication available to the couple at that particular moment.

They represent attempts to change the situation by adapting to the environment and adapting the environment to oneself.

For example, Anna feels that Marco is often distant and absorbed in his work. She develops possessive and jealous behaviors, checking his phone and accusing him of being untrustworthy. She cannot tolerate the sense of absence and is unable to tell him directly: “I miss you. I need you.”

Through this controlling behavior—jealousy—Anna adapts to the emptiness she feels by filling it with conflict and hope. At the same time, she creates a form of “passionate” interaction, even if conflictual, through which she pushes Marco to turn back toward her and pay attention to the relationship. She obtains either an angry or a reassuring response from him. In this way, she attempts to shape her environment—Marco—so that it responds to her need for closeness and attention.

Her deeper intentionality may be to become a more autonomous person, with a fuller life, able to differentiate herself and take distance while knowing that she is loved, chosen, and supported by Marco. Supporting individual autonomy and the autonomy of the couple thus becomes an area of therapeutic work for both partners, not just Anna.

Jealousy therefore becomes a temporary solution to a problem: how to maintain connection when other relational resources are lacking. Gestalt psychotherapist Vilja Girgždė emphasizes that connection has two dimensions: it involves both the relationship with the other and the relationship with oneself. After all, how easy it is to lose oneself within a couple relationship! (Girgždė, 2025).

Consider another example. During arguments, Luca stops talking. Sara experiences his silence as a wall and as abandonment. In this case, the symptom is withdrawal and shutting down.

The environment—Sara’s anger and the intensity of the atmosphere—is perceived as overwhelming. Silence protects Luca from feeling overwhelmed; it is his way of catching his breath and thus remaining within a field that feels unbearable. At the same time, his silence forces Sara to stop, slow down, and confront the absence of words.

In this way, Luca changes the field: he reduces the intensity of the interaction and seeks conditions that are more manageable for him. The symptom is not laziness or lack of interest; in this case, it is a creative attempt to regulate contact.

Or consider Chiara, who has felt no sexual desire for months. She says she loves Davide, but “sex has become too much.” The symptom is a blockage of desire.

Chiara is adapting to a period of exhaustion, work pressures, and underlying conflicts. By withdrawing from sex, she protects her energy and reduces the risk of feeling invaded. The absence of desire forces Davide and the couple to find other forms of intimacy, such as caresses, conversation, and emotional closeness.

In this way, Chiara transforms the relational environment, directing it toward forms of contact that are more sustainable for her at that moment. The symptom is not an “absence,” but a temporary solution that allows her to cope with the field without losing the relationship.

3. THE FIGURE-GROUND RELATIONSHIP

In the Gestalt model, the distinction between figure and ground makes it possible to move beyond a dichotomous interpretation of couple dynamics. Aggression and sexuality, like autonomy and connection, are not opposing poles but co-present qualities of the field. When one becomes the figure, the other does not disappear: it remains in the background and continues to shape the experience, even when it is not immediately visible.

From this perspective, clinical work does not consist of “resolving” polarities, but of making their continuous movement possible. The symptom emerges when this movement becomes rigid and a single mode of contact dominates, excluding the complexity of the field.

Co-therapy, in which two therapists work together, provides a setting that supports this figure-ground interplay. While one therapist follows the explicit figure—for example, the partner complaining about a lack of sex—the other maintains attention on the background, noticing subtle conflicts, aggressive tones, and unspoken issues, and bringing them into the foreground when necessary.

In summary, there is never just one isolated problem when working with couples. Every figure—sexuality, conflict, intimacy, or distance—exists only because a background supports it. The clinician facilitates the dynamic movement between figure and ground, enabling the couple to experience their situation in a more fluid and comprehensive way.

The therapist does not work to make the relationship succeed, but supports self-regulation, which may sometimes lead to separation. By interrupting habitual interruptions of contact and supporting the vital impulse, a space opens up from which a new relational configuration can emerge spontaneously. This change may lead toward greater union, but it may also lead toward separation.

This involves the principle of inclusion: the professional is part of the field, not a detached researcher, and therefore puts their own experiences at the service of the emerging figure.

4. THE PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION AND ALIENATION

The process of identification and alienation is a key experiential mechanism through which this fluidity becomes possible. In couple therapy, this work is central because it allows partners to move away from an attributive logic (“You are like this”) and toward a process-oriented perspective (“In this situation, I also become this way”). This is where the possibility of shared responsibility for conflict begins to emerge.

Identifying with the other does not mean empathizing with them or merging with them. It is a process through which we discover ourselves through the other, encountering aspects of ourselves that we have disowned, including the most uncomfortable ones.

By identifying with the other person’s experience and the way they perceive the problem, a patient begins not only to understand a different point of view, but also, in some sense, to make it their own. By putting themselves in the other person’s shoes, they discover aspects of themselves and potentialities of which they were previously unaware.

We are not always willing or able to do this. For example, when working with a violent person, we need to be able to identify with the violence within ourselves in order to approach their experience with curiosity and openness. This does not mean that we will become violent; rather, it means that we remain free to choose, because fear of violence no longer blocks the figure-ground process that shapes our choices in different situations. Understanding does not mean passively accepting another person’s worldview or adopting it as our own.

In therapy, we often explain to couples that if the other person is right, this does not mean that we are wrong, and vice versa.

If I can acknowledge the validity of the other person’s actions, even when they hurt me, and perhaps even recognize them as expressions of potential, a new relational scenario opens up. I may continue to seek change in my partner, but I will do so differently: without treating them as wrong, and while acknowledging their perspective even when I disagree with it.

Beisser’s paradoxical theory of change (1970) rests on a similar principle: each partner may change when the other no longer needs them to. If I need the other person to change, I will reinforce their tendency to remain where they are. If I learn to regulate myself and accept their difference, the other person may change.

When a partner agrees to identify with the other’s point of view, fears begin to emerge. Therapy provides support to clarify the nature of these fears and identify the resources needed to address them.

At this point, the partners begin to take responsibility for the problem: the other person is no longer simply wrong or bad. When differences become clear and partners can engage in dialogue or conflict without falling into power struggles in which one must be right and their perspective must prevail, both can become aware of whether they want to remain in the relationship or separate.

They can explore whether the difference brought by the other person, although frightening, fosters personal growth and therefore gives them a reason to stay, or whether their needs are leading them in a different direction.

The work of identification and alienation is central not only to couple therapy but also to working with people experiencing sexual dysfunction.

The genitals are a part of the body onto which we unconsciously displace relational dynamics, without taking responsibility for them. When patients identify with their penis or vagina, feelings such as anger, rejection, loneliness, aggression, and fear often emerge. With appropriate therapeutic support, these feelings can be redirected into the relationship, where they can find space for expression and dialogue.

As explained in Gestalt Sexology, to which readers are referred for a more comprehensive discussion, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, lack of desire, and other sexual difficulties can be understood as “creative adjustments,” because they may represent the only form of communication that a couple is sometimes able to establish (2022). Identification with one’s own genitals brings these experiences to the surface…

CONCLUSIONS: FROM THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER TO THE POWER OF CONTACT

Couple therapy from a Gestalt Therapy perspective does not seek to eliminate conflict or bring the relationship back to an ideal model of functioning. Conflict does not necessarily represent a failure of the bond; rather, it can express difference, vitality, and the need for transformation that runs through every meaningful relationship.

The problem arises when conflict is organized within a relational background based on dominance, where difference is experienced as a threat and power becomes a means of controlling the other. Within this field, aggression loses its creative and transformative function and becomes a struggle for supremacy. Sexuality, deprived of the possibility of encountering a genuinely distinct individual, risks turning into fusion, adaptation, or a loss of desire.

Therapeutic work therefore consists of making visible the implicit backgrounds that organize the relationship: cultural, family, and gender-related introjects; the ways in which each partner protects themselves; and the interruptions of contact that prevent the couple from encountering one another in their difference. Therapy does not stand outside the field but becomes part of a process of awareness through which new relational possibilities can emerge.

From this perspective, the goal is not to achieve a static balance between autonomy and connection, but to support the couple’s capacity to move creatively between these poles: to remain separate without growing distant, and to be close without erasing themselves. A healthy relationship is not defined by the absence of tension, but by the ability to move through it while keeping contact alive.

Sexual aggression, understood as the integration of the strength to assert oneself and the capacity to move toward the other, is a fundamental function of this process. It makes it possible to transform power from an instrument of domination into an opportunity for mutual influence, and conflict from a battlefield into a generative space in which two subjectivities can meet without either having to disappear into the other.

Couple therapy thus also becomes a political act—not because it proposes a predetermined relational model, but because it opens a space in which to critically examine internalized models of power and restore people’s ability to create freer, more reciprocal, and more vital forms of relationship.

In this sense, healing the couple also means transforming the cultural field that runs through it, fostering a revolution in contact grounded in difference, responsibility, and the creativity of encounter.

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FILMOGRAPHY

Resnick, R. W., & Resnick, R. F. (2016). Coming Home [Video]. Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles.
Resnick, R. W., & Resnick, R. F. (2016). Sound of the Silence [Video]. Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles.