Psychotherapy With Couples

'Beginners will learn something of the demands and complexity of marital work, but will be encouraged rather than dissuaded; those more experienced will readily recognize some of their own dilemmas and will be challenged to different ways of thinking. It offers an important reminder of how essential is the therapist's capacity to think. I can confidently recommend it as a book at once engaging and thought provoking, quietly persuasive and challenging and above all, practical.' - J. Douglas Haldane 'With one exception all the authors have completed one or other of the major psychotherapy trainings. They do not necessarily share the same theoretical approach as the theoretical discussions in the book show, but, nevertheless, there is an underlying consistency in their theoretical approach based on common elements in their theories, but perhaps more importantly derived from many years of working together open-mindedly and with mutual respect. They have truly 'married' their theories. The common elements include a conviction about the importance of the unconscious mind in determining current experiences and behavior: the over-riding importance of object-relationships both from the past and in the present; the use of current opportunities and relationships to re-work problems unresolved from the past, and the view that marriage is an arena par excellence where these phenomena are experienced and can be or must be worked at, with or without the help of a marital psychotherapist. Most importantly, the authors give a central place in their work to transference and counter-transference phenomena. The book is indeed rich in its understanding of marriage, an understanding derived both from clinical practice and from psychodynamic theory. For other professions working with families and marriage the description of the way the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies has developed and adapted psychotherapeutic techniques to the needs of marital therapy should prove very enlightening and helpful. The book must be of interested to the many people who directly or indirectly encounter marriages and their problems in the course of their own work.' - Isabel Menzies Lyth