Complex love as relational nurturing: an integrating ultramodern concept

This article is based on the description of therapy with a family in which three members had been given a serious psychiatric diagnosis: a schizophrenic disorder, a borderline personality disorder, and an antisocial personality disorder. The underlying hypothesis was that these disorders were related to the specific ways in which the obstruction of relational nurturing had influenced the turbulent history of the family. The therapy aimed to reopen channels of nurturing behavior, promoting a reparative attitude on the part of the father that could be extended and developed throughout the relational network. This entailed working with concepts such as "reconfirmation" and the "relational incubator." The idea that the relational roots of psychopathology (which do not deny the importance of biological bases) are to be found in the obstruction of love by power is proposed as an ultramodern premise capable of integrating both modernist and postmodern concepts and sensibilities.