I very nearly choked on my coffee the other day as I read about the Maltese Church authorities’ suggestion that people should take pictures of their loved ones and spouses to work and have them displayed there by way of keeping their marriages intact and, lo and behold, steering clearly away from any divorce temptations.

This happened for two reasons: 1. I have always been intrigued, possibly fascinated, by the psychological influence of photographs and graphic images in the everyday lives of normal men and women, and 2. The outrageously naive idea that such a simple act would and could stop anyone from opting out of a relationship, a marriage or a love situation.

Like many, I have never been one for carrying photographs in my wallet, though I am sure it does not minimise one’s strong romantic attachment in life. Nor have I been one for putting pictures in silver frames on my desk at the office, believing the more personal contact via the old blower was and will always be more effective and sufficient. We have all seen footage of presidential and prime ministerial mantle shelves overladen with framed pictures of their flesh and blood families living just a couple of corridors down from the office.

Of course there is no harm in any of that, but it does become somewhat comic and superficial when you attach to it some special significance, other than the accepted momentary psychological impact of photographs.

Visiting the radio newsroom of WTMJ in Milwaukee one day, I came to realise that photographic images can be useful when put there with a specific purpose in mind. The news-reading journalist hosting me at the time asked me to follow him into the studio. Before he sat in front of the microphone, he took out a framed picture of a smiling man, and put it down directly facing him.

Was this some kind of gay arrangement, I wondered at the time? He seemed to have read my mind and quickly explained that the man was a best friend and he needed the picture as a kind of focus during his live broadcast. Radio is a very personal and intimate medium and the photograph, it transpired, helped the journalist to communicate better with his listeners.

The idea caught on in the station and while many thought it was hilarious to watch these strong-willed men and women taking photographs out of satchels and handbags before going on air, it was also generally agreed it somehow worked. No one blew kisses at the images or planted lips on them, but the psychological effect was there. One was not talking to the empty air but to someone he or she knew well. The broadcast successfully over, the pictures went back into the dark interiors they had been taken out from, and all the blessed warmth was instantly transformed into a mere piece of practical psychology.

Television works on images, so people there tend to feel less dependent on such graphic personal accoutrements, but those who cross over from radio often take the same habits with them. In New York in the 80s, I was once lucky enough to witness, from within, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour show, then enjoying the best of ratings.

To my astonishment, I watched Jim Lehrer quickly leaving the studio during a pre-recorded segment to make a dash into the green room – where I stood – to make eye contact with a huge framed photograph of a woman, possibly a friend, a wife, a cousin, a niece or whatever, and then rush back to Robert MacNeil’s side for some more live anchoring.

So do pictures of men and women really work in different scenarios, and can the idea, for example, really be put to good use in connection with the current national debate on divorce? I have my doubts. Do you really love or not love your wife if you display or do not display her picture at work, very much in the sense of the stupid perception that anyone who is for the introduction of a divorce law actually wants to divorce?

Marriage is not about photographs, but about trust. It is not based on images, but on fidelity. However, it can be successful just as much as it can fail. I remember that, as dating young teenagers in the 60s, some of us often used to exchange photographs, some sort of manifestation that one was “going steady”, as the popular term was at the time. When things went bad, the photographs were either quickly withdrawn or destroyed, sometimes quite theatrically.

Today’s teenagers in love do it differently, it being so easy to take and delete photographs by using a mobile phone. But it is still images and perceptions, still photographs carrying – rightly or wrongly – a kind of message.

Trivialising the whole divorce debate in this way, however, makes no sense at all. The divorce law being proposed for Malta, as achieved in no-less Catholic Ireland, concerns broken marriages that, after four or more years, are beyond repair. Mao Tse-Tung size photographs in gigantic silver frames will not save them, but caught in them are real men and women who are suffering and who certainly need our understanding as they search desperately for a new beginning to their love lives.

Rather than with the display of framed pictures of smiling spouses, good marriages can only be nurtured through an educational, not necessarily religious process of preparation. All the good intentions in the world do not work when a marriage has gone on the rocks, a feeling of distrust has crept in and, after years of forced separation, both sides simply acknowledge that there can be no going back.

The same goes for the offspring of failed marriages. Putting their images in frames will not alleviate the pain or somehow lessen the equal love they have for both their parents. It will have to be a strong sense of shared responsibility, aided by a strict divorce law that helps make the situation less difficult for all parties concerned.

After all, the offspring of failed marriages that end up as Church-approved annulments have to face the same psychological dilemma. Indeed, most loyally hold on to pictures of both mum and dad, even though they are more than acutely aware of the bitter reality they have to live from then on.

Love is not a photograph. Much less so is married life. It is a commitment, an undertaking between men and women. A civic procedure that can work or, alas, sometimes stop functioning.