Individual meaning versus couple meaning: Modes of formation in the discourse of couple therapy—An interdisciplinary inquiry

Abstract This article examines how change becomes possible in couple discourse within psychoanalytic couple therapy. It proposes “couple discourse” as a clinical and theoretical concept for listening to the ways partners signify, project and transform experience together. Drawing on object relations theory, semiotics, philosophy of language and discourse studies, the article distinguishes between individual meaning and couple meaning, and between features of couple discourse that are more open to change and those that remain more resistant. Clinical vignettes are used to show how bodily‐affective immediacy, conflictual exchange and symbolic mediation may be understood as different states within the couple's shared discursive field. The article argues that therapeutic change depends not only on interpreting unconscious projections, but also on cultivating shared language, first‐person speech and agency within the couple relationship. It concludes that couple discourse offers a framework for understanding how partners may move from the repetition of early object relations toward more deliberate forms of dialogue, mutual recognition and shared meaning.