A study of dissatisfied married couples found that those who received individual counseling and consultation benefited more than did persons receiving one kind of traditional counseling for couples. (Author)

Fifty couples who had the most positive or negative reactions in a group of Marriage Encounter couples were interviewed. Results indicated nine couples experienced significant negative changes related to Marriage Encounter, suggesting that distressed couples who attend Marriage Encounters are susceptible to further marital deterioration.…

Recent developments in the establishment of modern family codes of governing the relationships between husband, wife, and children have provided long needed vehicles which make interdisciplinary cooperation an absolute necessity. Counselors and lawyers must work together, as lawyers, courts, and juries proceed to divide families and property in…

The factual basis for therapy and family advice urging "leveling" in the sense of giving fre expression to aggressive feelings is reviewed and results presented of a study which tested the hypothesis that verbal aggression is a substitute for physical aggression. Presented at National Council on Family Relations, 1973. (Author)

The author reviews the development of research in marriage counseling, offers some possible explanations as to why it has differed from general science research, and delineates some decisive issues for marriage counseling research. (Editor)

Therapists (N=250) completed questionnaires rating the frequency, severity, and treatment difficulty for 29 problems commonly experienced by distressed couples. Responses indicated a number of potential directions for research in marital therapy. Communication and alcoholism were rated as the most damaging and difficult problems to treat.…

Couples (N=50) were interviewed conjointly, and spouses were rated separately on a 61-item checklist to demonstrate the actuarial validity of the marital satisfaction inventory. Findings supported the basic interpretive intent of individual scales and demonstrated convergent validity. (Author)

A divorce is less likely to seriously traumatize the dissolving family when both the legal and emotional issues of divorce are addressed. Attorney-therapist teams are proposed as an effective vehicle to help minimize the stress of the divorce experience. (Author)

Fifty-five couples served in the study using a between-subjects design, additional response measures, and additional positive communication training. The reciprocity counseling produced significantly more improvement than the discussion-type counseling for the three marital adjustment measures after four sessions. (Author)

To investigate the validity of three methods of dealing with anger--calm, rational discussion, "fair fighting," and sharing of hurt and of fear of hurt--two studies were performed. Results suggest that intimacy may be found in sharing of hurt feelings. (Author)

Explores how global and political issues affect microsystems like the marital unit. A variety of interactional patterns emerged in the observation of 30 couples marital interactions during a prolonged stressful situation. Couples reporting a deterioration of their relationship had more disagreements regarding the meaning of a peace process and its…

Discusses the borderline/schizoid marital constellation as the prominent constellation among borderline patients on a long-term inpatient unit. Contends that treatment of this marital constellation requires application of the concept of the holding environment as an essential treatment construct with the therapist as manager of the holding…

This meta-analysis summarizes results from 30 randomized experiments that compare behavioral marital therapy with no-treatment control with distressed couples. Results showed that behavioral marital therapy is significantly more effective than no treatment (d=.585). Although behavioral marital therapy research studies tend to be conducted under…

Infidelity is a common issue with which distressed couples and their therapists grapple. However, there are no data on the efficacy of commonly used therapies to treat couples in which there has been an affair. In the present exploratory study, the authors examined the therapy outcomes of a sample of infidelity couples (n=19) who had participated…

Data collected from 161 married couples were analyzed for communication patterns indicative of "domineeringness" and "transactional redundancy" (the degree of randomness contained within a couple's communicative behavior). From this data came the following observations: There is a negative correlation between domineeringness, particularly by the…