From the couple to the family

The author takes his inspiration from the work of the Lausanne Group to support the thesis of dual polarity as a species-specific area of the becoming of human beings. This thesis is presented within the epistemological framework of complexity. According to the author the differentiation between dual, triadic or multi-personal is a false problem: the environment is normally multiform and varied, but the relationship with the I-subject is always dual, to the extent that the context becomes unified in the Gestalt perception of a group of several individuals as another pole of interaction. The individual can enter into a relationship with the group or the multiform, but always and only through a polarity that reduces the elements to two: I-other/s. The understanding of man's becoming at the birth of a child is then deepened, underlining the delicate passage from the couple to the parental couple and then to the family. The article concludes with a brief list of some possible meanings of the investment that the marital/parental couple makes in their child.