This is an initial attempt to animate Staemmler’s second scheme of interaction between the partners in a couple.
I’ve shown the shapes shifting because that is what happens in the interactions between the partners – behaviours, and the meanings attributed to them by the other party, are in constant flux; and in constant reaction to a wide range of factors in the field* (cultural and gender to name just two), both in and out of awareness.
Frank Staemmler’s schemes of interaction are in his paper Joint Constructions: On the Subject Matter of Gestalt Couple Therapy, Exemplified by Gender-Specific Misunderstandings with Regards to Intimacy, in Robert Lee’s recent book The Secret Language of Intimacy.
field: “complex interaction of all effects for a given person”. For more on the Gestalt field, see here and my own paper here (PDF).
