An Introduction to Three Approaches to Marital Therapy 

Introduction

A good marriage is one of the most rewarding experience that human beings can have during their lifetime. According to Nathan Schwartz and Lydia Salant, marriage is our “civilization's most prized institutions,” yet at the same time an “extremely complex and potentially destructive structure.”[1] This paper would discuss, in brief, some of the reasons for marital conflicts and after that, three methods that are useful in helping disturbed marriage relationships: Role-relationship marriage counseling, family group therapy and transactional approach. Each method offers a lot of possibilities for pastoral use. 

1. Reasons for Seeking Marital Therapy

Dixon Murphy puts the reasons for seeking marital therapy into three categories:

a. Complaints

Some of the common complaints couples have regarding each other are: “lack of communication, constant arguments, unfulfilled emotional needs, sexual dissatisfaction, financial disagreements, in-law trouble, infidelity, conflicts about children, domineering spouse, suspicious spouse, alcoholism, physical abuse” etc.[2] 

b. Marital life-cycle problems

Marriage relationships are very much influenced by the events that are associated with the life-cycle of the partners. Couples may seek therapy “when a crisis occurs because of a new development in the marital life-cycle, such as regarding the birth of a child, a change in job, children leaving home,”[3] retirement from job, ageing etc. 

c. Enrichment

Couples who experience reasonable satisfaction in their married life may sometimes request therapy in obtaining a more fulfilling relationship. Often such couples select marriage enrichment programs rather than seeing a marriage therapist.[4] 

2. Three Approaches to Marital Therapy

“Marital therapy is a form of psychotherapy designed to modify psychologically the interaction of two people who are in conflict over one or a variety of parameters, such as social, emotional, sexual and economic [parameters].”[5] 

2.1. Role Relationship Marriage Counseling

In the role relationship method, the focus is on improving the relationship aspect rather than resolving the intra-psychic personality conflicts.[6] Though disturbed relationships reflect inner conflicts, distortions in relationships intensify these inner conflicts. Yet when focus is given on improving the relationship, it becomes more constructive, and individuals belonging to the relationship become free to change. 

The needs whose satisfaction which are important to a marriage are: personality needs and sexual needs.[7] According to Glasser, human beings have “two essential personality needs: first, to love and be loved. Secondly, to feel that one is worthwhile to oneself and to others.”[8] Regarding sexual needs, both partners have the right to a fulfilling sexual life. In a marriage where there is a high degree of need deprivation, it will result in an unhappy relationship. The basic goal of this method to marriage counseling is to make the relationship more mutually need-satisfying. 

In this method, the counselor sets the following operational goals so as to enhance the relationship. The achievement of even a few of the following operational goals would greatly improve the need-satisfaction capabilities of most marriages. They are:[9]

a) Reopen the lines of communication.

b) Interrupt the vicious cycle of mutual retaliation.

c) Face the need to work together in strengthening the relationship.

d) Become aware of the nature of interaction, particularly those that produce pain in them, and the roots of the interaction in their role images.

e) Learn how to learn from conflict.

f) Have experiences of thinking together about sources of pain and pleasure in their marriage, followed by planning and working together toward mutually set goals.

g) Face the futility of the effort to reform the other person and begin to “release” each other, and accept the unchangeable aspects of their relationship.

h) Begin to work on their own areas of irresponsibility in the marriage.

i) Begin to experiment and discover new ways of relating which produce more mutual satisfaction of personality and sexual needs.

j) Find a focus of concern outside the family and a more satisfying relationship with extended family such as neighbors, church members etc. 

2.1.1 Relevance of Role-Relationship for Pastoral Care

The role relationship method of marriage counseling is better adapted to the work of a counseling-pastor as the goals are more achievable in short term pastoral counseling.[10] Many couples can be helped through brief counseling, aimed merely at restoring communication, and helping them to be pulled out of destructive interactions. The pastor can teach the couple how to treat and react to the indiscretions of the other person. Couples can be taught to express their feelings rather than bottle it up so that the pain does not accumulate over and explode out one day. Next, the couple can be taught to speak of their expectations from each other regarding every aspect of their life, for example, sharing of responsibilities. 

This method is more suitable for moderately sound marriages that have thrown off-balance by some severe family crisis. It tends to avoid many of the pitfalls of psychotherapeutic approach: it is more time-consuming; the more strongly motivated party can achieve significant insight, without it producing a more need-satisfying relationship etc.[11] 

Role-relationship method is bound to fail when people who seek counseling have very disturbed underlying personalities. In such a situation, the counselor should shift to individual psychotherapy,[12]

or even do referral counseling for cases that require psychiatric treatment. 

2.2 Family Group Therapy

This approach refers to the simultaneous treatment of an entire family so as to bring changes in the family system. “The pain of the identified patient is an outward expression of the inward pain which the whole family is suffering in its relationships.”[13] Therefore, changes in an individual can occur only when the family system changes. Resistance to change in an individual centers in the family as a group. Here the focus is shifted from the identified patient to the family so that the problems in the family relationships are tried to be resolved.[14] The power of the family therapy is that it deals with the difficulty that people have in identifying how they contribute to the problems that surround them. For example, when a husband complains about his wife's nagging, the family therapist asks how he contributes to her doing that.[15] 

There are several approaches to family therapy but this paper will be focusing on John Elderkin Bell, one of the pioneers of family therapy.[16] Family group therapy relied primarily on stimulating open discussion between the members of the family. Bell approached the therapy through a series of stages. First was the child-centered phase, in which children were helped to express their concerns and wishes.[17] He used to hold preliminary meetings with parents so as to orient them in order to encourage them to listen to their children. The second stage was the parent-centered stage, in which it was the parents' turn to communicate and express their issues. The third and final stage is the family centered stage in which Bell equalized support for the entire family while they continued to improve their communication and work out solutions to their problems.[18]  These stages are not to be imposed rigidly but they should be allowed to emerge in the natural flow of therapy. Families often go back and forth among the focuses of interaction. 

2.2.1 Relevance of Family Group Therapy for Pastoral Care

This approach has direct relevance for the counseling-pastor since the pastor has normal ongoing relationships with all the members of the families of his/her congregation. This approach is more efficient than individual counseling since it deals directly with the family. Consider the case where the parents of a family invite the pastor to speak with their child, such an opportunity can be converted to deal with other issues which the rest of the family members are facing. For example, when invited to counsel a rebellious or depressed adolescent, the pastor gets an opportunity to analyze how the husband-and-wife's marital life is contributing to the behaviour of the child. Here the pastor can take effort to enrich their marital life. Also, parents can be educated to the changes that adolescence brings in children and thus they can be equipped to deal with the situation. 

Family group therapy is often helpful on a relatively short-term basis.[19] Another aspect that should be understood is that family therapy is not an approach for ministers with little training in counseling. Since the counseling-pastor is dealing simultaneously with several members who have their own individual needs, he/she should “possess a substantial degree of inter-personal awareness and skill in counseling.”[20] 

2.3 Transactional Approach

Transactional approach to psychotherapy developed by Eric Berne helps to improve inter-personal relationships. His therapy has two dimensions: structural analysis and transactional analysis. Structural analysis is concerned with the segregation and analysis of ego states.[21] The goal of this procedure is to “establish the predominance of ego states and free them from contamination by archaic elements.”[22] The ego states are referred to as Parent, Adult and Child. The Parent ego has two sides: the nurturing side and the prohibitive side. The Adult ego deals objectively and realistically with the things around us.[23] The Child ego is the playful, creative and pleasure-seeking side of the personality.[24] 

In the transactional dimension, transactions between people, ranging from simple to complex ones, are analyzed. Pastime, Game and Script form the vocabulary of transactional analysis. A pastime is a transaction without an ulterior motive.[25] Game is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome.[26] Scripts are more complex group of transactions which are unconscious master plans which determine the overall direction of a person's life.[27] 

When the transaction is complementary i.e. when both parties respond on the same level: Child-Child, Adult-Adult etc., it is mutually constructive and satisfying. But when the transaction is crossed – when the parties respond to each other from different levels, there is a breakdown in communication.[28] 

2.3.1 Relevance of Transactional Approach for Pastoral Care

In the context of counseling married couples, the transactional approach provides a new perspective of understanding communication between husband and wife. According to B.L. Greene's study, lack of communication tops the list of complaints that couples have.[29] Already existing communication gaps are widened when couples engage in mutual verbal retaliation in the face of conflicts. Transactional approach can help the counseling pastor to help the couples recognize the destructive Parent-Child games and help them to adopt transactions that are complementary. The goal of transactional approach to counseling is to strengthen the adult side so that it can regulate the activities of the parent and the child.[30] The importance of transactional approach is that it can be used in combination with the other approaches of therapy for improving communication skills. 

As communication is vital to every relationship, this method is a boon to counselors as it helps in improving inter-personal relationships. The scope of this approach can be applied for other types of relationships such as parent-child, pastor-parishioner etc. 

Conclusion

The portrayal that “they lived happily ever after” is only part of fairy tales. Conflicts in marriage is not about 'if' they come, it is about how to deal with and learn from conflicts 'when' they come. Marital therapies such as role relationship, family group therapy and transactional approach, when used by a pastor with discretion, helps couples and family members to identify their problems in relating to one another and rectify them. These approaches help the pastor in equipping the couple to improve their problem solving skills.

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Bibliography

Berne, Eric. Games People Play. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981.

Berne, Eric. Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. London: Evergreen Books, 1961.

Clinebell, Howard J. Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966.

Greene, B. A Clinical Approach to Marital Problems. Illinois: Thomas Publishers, 1970.

Mathur, Lal. “Causes of Marital Disharmony and its Remedy.” In Marital Disputes and Counselling.         Edited by Manju Goel. New Delhi: APH Publishing, 1997.

Murphy, Dixon. “Marriage Counseling and Marital Therapy." Dictionary of Pastoral Care and       Counseling. Edited by Rodney J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990, 685-88.

Nichols, Micheal P. Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Boston: Pearson Education, 2008.

Salant, Nathan Schwartz and Lydia Salant. “For Better or for Worse.” The Living Pulpit 1/4 (October-        December 1992), 20-21.

Miller, James S. “Therapies Ministers Use.” The Christian Century 94/19 (May 25, 1997), 504-8.]

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[1]              Nathan Schwartz Salant and Lydia Salant, “For Better or for Worse,” The Living Pulpit 1/4(October-December 1992), 20.

[2]              Dixon Murphy, “Marriage Counseling and Marital Therapy," Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, edited by    Rodney J. Hunter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 686.

[3]              Dixon Murphy, “Marriage Counseling and Marital Therapy," 686.

[4]              Dixon Murphy, “Marriage Counseling and Marital Therapy," 686.

[5]              Lal Mathur, “Causes of Marital Disharmony and its Remedy,” in Marital Disputes and Counselling, edited by Manju Goel, (New Delhi: APH Publishilg, 1997), 42.

[6]              Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), 101.

[7]              Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 99.

[8]              Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 18.

[9]              Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 101.

[10]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 117.

[11]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 117.

[12]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 116.

[13]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 122.

[14]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 120.

[15]            Micheal P. Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods (Boston: Pearson Education, 2008), 8.

[16]            Micheal P. Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, 28.

[17]            Micheal P. Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, 55.

[18]            Micheal P. Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, 55.

[19]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 121.

[20]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 129.

[21]            Eric Berne, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (London: Evergreen Books, 1961), 22.

[22]            Eric Berne, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, 22.

[23]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 133.

[24]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 131.

[25]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 134.

[26]            Eric Berne, Games People Play (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), 48.

[27]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 136.

[28]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 137.

[29]   B. Greene, A Clinical Approach to Marital Problems (Illinois: Thomas Publishers, 1970), 33.

[30]            Howard J. Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling, 133.