Where one of the parties is under 18, California law since November, 1970 has required premarital counseling before receipt of a marriage license. This article describes the program, established to meet this need based on a model of education about problems of everyday living. (Author)

A management consultant and a social worker conceptually apply a flexible, easy to learn business tool to marriage counseling. (Author)

Notes a pattern in marital therapy wherein losses are not mourned or shared; instead one spouse uses the other for externalization of internal conflict. Explains how loss tends to be experienced as disenchantment with the spouse. Describes the conjoint format that can facilitate mourning and the sharing of losses. (Author)

This paper describes a seminar approach to postdivorce adjustment. Topical content areas covered in the seven-week seminars are discussed. The interaction of leader-guided problem solving and participant input is addressed along with a series of preliminary conclusions reached concerning the efficacy of this approach to treatment. (Author)

Presents an operational definition of intimacy and reviews evidence that a lack of intimacy is associated with nonpsychotic emotional illness, marital maladjustment, and family dysfunction. Describes and illustrates a technique, cognitive self-disclosure, which facilitates marital intimacy. Discusses the role of self-disclosure, modeling, and…

This paper reviews data on the incidence of marital violence and recommends methods of intervention on a family and social level. Myths which may block awareness of this widespread problem are briefly described. Particular attention is given to the inadequacy of the catharsis hypothesis in explaining and treating marital violence. (Author)

Over the past five years the author has taught approximately 1000 students in experientially-oriented courses on the divorced and the widowed; of these 1000, about 300 were divorced women. Many of these divorcees (but not all, by any means) have shown considerable change in self image from the start to the end of the course. These changes are…

A child with a serious disability can have an extensive emotional impact on the family. A case study of the parents of a disabled child describes the demands imposed on them by therapeutic programs and the use of counseling to focus on their marriage and their problem-solving styles. (JDD)

The interaction between post separation adjustment for reunited military families and the Women's Liberation Movement is a complex occurrence which is beginning to have a profound effect on some military families. Two forces are acting upon wives of servicemen that subject marriages to conflicts previously unheard of. One force is the critical…

Presents the dynamics, implications and treatment of extramarital sex. Discusses historical and cultural perspectives, various types of infidelity experiences, marital styles as they relate to infidelity, and family therapy implications. Offers recommendations for treatment and a brief consideration of extramarital relationships as a healthy…

The tenets of traditional sex therapy based on dysfunction and pathology are critiqued, and a feminist model proposed. Recognizing that equity and power issues, particularly in heterosexual relationships, are basic issues, women and issues of gender are at the center of the model. Three cases illustrate the model. (Author/EMK)

At mid-life, almost every marriage undergoes a crisis, but most people are looking for a way to get through this crisis, and not for a way out of the marriage. This monograph examines the basic issues surrounding mid-life divorce. Several different perspectives are represented in this collection of articles as various clinicians discuss the…

Presents a description of the authors' experiences in a university counseling center with therapy groups for individuals who had undergone male-female partnership failure. The impact separation and divorce have on individuals, resulting adjustment stages, and corresponding group goals are highlighted. (Author)

Offers an integrative model of supervision--the Intersystem Model of couple therapy of the Marriage Council of Philadelphia--that consolidates individual, interactional, and intergenerational therapies, providing a base from which the supervisor of couple therapy can be most effective. A detailed case of supervision is utilized to demonstrate the…

Constructivist approaches to therapy that view the therapist and patient as equal participants in co-creating a new dialogue render aspects of experience invisible. What is missing is an awareness of the dominant structures in society and the dominant ways of thinking and speaking. Three key factors need to be understood: first, the way meanings…