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Psychoanalyst and sex therapist Alain Eril has been working with couples for 25 years. At the center of his method are desire and relationships, sexual fantasies and unconscious attitudes, a creative search for solutions that do not exist in advance.
Psychologies: What do you see as the task of a psychotherapist working with couples?
Alain Eril: My task is to work on meanings. When partners understand the meaning of why they act one way or another, it becomes much easier for them. It’s not about rationalizing everything, but some minimum of reflection is needed to bring to light the reasons that brought the two together and connected, to understand why they are together.
How would you define a couple?
A. E.: For me, a couple is the experience of living in scarcity. Each of the two will have to learn that “the other cannot give me everything I need, the other cannot fill me.” A couple is when we ask another for something that he does not have, said Jacques Lacan. And we have to come to terms with the fact that the other does not fully suit us. If one of the partners needs the other too much, he will strangle him. And so the couple is constantly in search of balance, there can be no peace in it: there is always work to be done. You always need to deal with relationships, learn to communicate differently, change together. A couple comes to therapy to evolve, but some part of each of the two doesn’t want change. This is the difficulty, but also the beauty of the work of a psychotherapist.
Alain Héril, founder and director of the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy Indigo Formations, Psychologies expert, author of books including “Love” (“Aimer”, Marabou, 2013) and “A woman in her prime” (“Femme épanouie”, Payot , 2016). His website
We have a popular phrase by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “To love is to look together in the same direction” …
A. E.: But sometimes you still need to look at each other! Yes, pairing often occurs because two people are walking in the same direction. They have a common project that keeps the partners together, but it is important to come out of the merge and see the one we have chosen: “Who are you, the person next to me? How are you different?” Living in a couple, we live each in our own country. It seems to us that we speak the same language, but this is not so. The question is how do you teach me your language; how you accept me in your country and how I accept you in mine. If partners are not ready to acknowledge differences, they will forever live in the illusion of merging: “you and I are one and the same.”
What do young people aged 23-25 expect from a couple today? Do they have their ideal relationship?
A. E.: There are many young couples who get together quite early and have a very romantic idea of marriage. They are going to be together all their lives, fidelity to a partner, the success of a relationship is important for them. For example, a young couple came to me, they are 26 years old, and they complained about the lack of desire. How is this possible at 26? It turned out that they have known each other since kindergarten, their romance began at 16, so this is already a mature couple with a lot of experience. There are more and more of these couples. Often these young people who dream of creating a lasting union are the children of divorced parents or parents of the 60s generation that preached free love. Children build their couple “on the contrary”: we want a strong relationship, we will not divorce, we will not part, we will not cheat on each other … They want to “repair” the parental couple in their own way: our parents suffered, but we will show them that marriage is beautiful that it can stand. This is a kind of return of the couple as an unconditional value.
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Just these traditional family values - one marriage for life, fidelity, close connection between generations – are being promoted by the state today. But they are not very compatible with the modern ideal of enjoying life, self-realization, autonomy, with the desire to make a career. We are trying to reconcile these two attitudes, which creates tension.
A. E.: Yes, this can happen too. Those couples who are now 40-45 years old and who have been together for a long time are asking questions: “How can I succeed? Fulfill your desires in sex, experience new pleasures? What if I’m already tired of being around this person? Hence the general fascination with swinging: many couples go to such clubs to get new sensations, refresh their feelings, test themselves. If one of the partners feels an urgent need for self-realization, wants to determine his own life and his goals, then the other will unwittingly hamper him. As a result, partners cheat on each other, and cheating is equally common among men and women. And those partners who come with complaints of lack of desire often had extramarital affairs in the past. Even if on a conscious level one partner has forgiven the other, there is still a trace in the form of bitterness or anger. This is a big problem, and it was revealed, in particular, by psychoanalysis. We live in a world where the subject is important: “I”, my self-realization, my personal choice; but at the same time I live in a couple, and this imposes obligations and restrictions on me. My patients often get stuck trying to reconcile these two demands.
What advice do you give them?
A. E.: I am a psychoanalyst, not a coach, it is not my task to give advice, although that is what they want from me. More and more of those who are waiting for clear instructions. What recipe will work? What should we do? They are forced to look for a solution that does not exist. And sometimes they manage to come up with something completely new that suits them and only them.
On March 4, at 19.00, the Winzavod will host the second public lecture by Alain Eril in Moscow “The key to mutual understanding of the sexes: are we so opposite?” Details and registration .
Alain Eril: “In love, we ask a partner to give us what he does not have. And we have to come to terms with the fact that the other does not fully suit us.
When two people come to work with a therapist, what do they really want?
A. E.: They want to kill the couple they used to be. I know “kill” is a very strong word. But they are already a dying couple. We need to help her die, disappear, so that another will be born from this couple.
Your colleague, psychoanalyst Claude Almos called her book on parenting Why Love Is Not Enough.1. When it comes to a couple, do you think love is enough?
A. E.: Love is not enough, but it is necessary. When a couple comes to me, I first find out if there is love between them: “You are here, you have difficulties, but at the same time you love each other?” My colleagues are perplexed: “How do you know that they really love each other?” And I say, “Because they said so.” We have been inventing a definition of what love is for hundreds of years, but if two people say to me: “Yes, we love each other,” I have no reason to doubt. Then I look to see if there is boredom and indifference in these relationships. Because for me, the opposite of love is indifference. And if it is, it will be difficult to work. In general, the psychotherapy of a couple is not a quick path, the work can last 2-3 years, or even 5-6 years. Partners need time.
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- The birth of sexuality
Whose ideas do you rely on as a psychoanalyst?
A. E.: There are four pillars to my work. These are Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Sandor Ferenczi and Irvin Yalom. These are the four thinkers I rely on. There were other people who shaped me, however strange it may seem to you. I worked as a psychotherapist in a psychiatric hospital for seven years. I was lucky, I worked with real schizophrenics, and communication with them taught me a lot. For example, the fact that even when you work with crazy people, you still remain in the realm of the human. And the whole question is how exactly this human is present and manifests itself in people who are not with us, who are somewhere in another world. It also helped me to see and understand my own insanity, the insane part of myself. You know, to be in this profession, you have to be a little crazy yourself. And to have great faith in man and the human.
1 C. Halmos “Why is love not enough?” (Pockets, 2008).