Marriage A Search For Healing

This work reveals those key elements that make for greater bonding with couples in therapy. The author believes that improvement in the couples he treats almost always involves greater closeness and the development of greater capacity for intimacy. Change can come about in different ways for different couples. For some, insight appears to play to play an important role. Learning about one's central problematic relationship of childhood and its re-enactment with one's partner in adult life frequently involves also learning about the ways one subtly recreates this dysfunctional relationship structure.; For others, improvement appears to be closely related to experiencing new ways of dealing with conflict. This avenue of improvement relies in part on the understanding but, even more, on learning the approaches to conflict resolution. It is as if these couples need to hear over and over again the recordings that document their insensitivities and consequent failure. They must offer Each Other The Experiences ThatAre Emotionally Suppportive And Crucial for emotional and physical health and also give life its meaning.; Finally, the treatment approach outline also has significant effects on the therapists. Indeed, it may be difficult to know who learns most. Involvement as a couples therapist may have all sorts of impact on the therapists, and it will come as surprise that it is in the area of the therapist's capacity for intimacy that the greatest effect can be experienced.

Jerry M. Lewis, M.D., is Senior Research Psychiatrist at the Timberlawn Research Foundation.