Reference no: EM133317738

Question: Suppose you are a Bowenian therapist for Cinderella and the Prince. Discuss the types of questions that you will ask the couple. How does socio-economic status play a role in this relationship? Identify and address at least two cultural differences between Cinderella and the Prince.

Case Study: Let us suppose that Cinderella and the prince got married. But marital problems have arisen, and she seeks the help of a therapist. A traditional Freudian might investigate Cinderella's repression of her sexual instincts and unresolved oedipal feelings she had for her parents. This therapist or analyst would analyze Cinderella's problems in terms of defenses and conflicts between the structures of the ego and the id. A therapist working with an object relations perspective would note that Cinderella suffered early psychological deprivation from the loss of her mother. Possibly this loss caused Cinderella to make use of the psychological defense mechanism of splitting, by which she idealized some women (such as her fairy godmother) and saw other women as "all bad" (her stepsisters and stepmother). She idealized the prince, knowing him for only a short time. A marriage based on such distorted inner images of herself and others is bound to run into problems, as she sooner or later must deal with the prince as a real person with human flaws. In object relations theory, the issue would center on the discrepancy between Cinderella's inner world and the persons and situations of the actual world (St. Clair & Wigren, 2004).