Why Relationships Matter

Take our Can You Spot Red Flags In A Relationship?

Find a therapist to strengthen relationships

Symptoms or relationship distress may persist because they (unconsciously) serve a purpose.

Change may feel threatening when distress serves a stabilizing function.

Couples therapy helps meet underlying needs without you or your relationship having to be "sick" to meet them.

In my couples therapy work, it is not uncommon to encounter relationships that appear stuck. Symptoms or problems persist despite intervention. Conflicts recur despite insight. While the severity of distress and external stressors are often cited as explanations, psychoanalytic theory has long pointed to another, less visible factor: the advantages that accompany suffering.

This phenomenon is known as secondary gain, a concept first articulated by Sigmund Freud in his effort to explain the persistence of neurotic symptoms. Although often misunderstood, secondary gain remains a clinically relevant lens for understanding why change in intimate relationships can be so difficult.

Freud’s Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Gain

Freud introduced the concepts of primary and secondary gain to describe unconscious processes involved in symptom formation. In his model, symptoms are compromise formations: they simultaneously express forbidden or distressing impulses and protect the individual from the anxiety those impulses would otherwise generate.

Primary gain refers to the internal psychological relief achieved through the symptom itself. The symptom reduces intrapsychic conflict and anxiety by keeping disturbing wishes, affects, or ideas out of conscious awareness. This process is primarily unconscious. In some cases, symptom formation may also involve regression, with the individual reverting to earlier modes of functioning and unconsciously adopting a more dependent position that allows for protection or........

© Psychology Today