Archive for September, 2005

Immaturity may be general, involving all aspects of the personality, or it may be limited to one or more aspects. For purposes of discussion it is useful to think of it from each point of view separately.

Physical immaturity, or lack of physical development, is generally fairly obvious, and will have been in most cases the subject of medical treatment. It is not often a factor in marital discord, and if it seems to be present it is appropriately referred to a doctor for help.

Intellectual immaturity may show itself as ignorance, rigidity of thought and ideas, or as plain stupidity. In these days it is possible to make some assessment in any doubtful cases by having various intelligence tests carried out. Here again this kind of immaturity may not have very profound effects on marriage unless there is gross inequality in intelligence. Many quite unintelligent people manage to get on well in marriage and even parenthood if they are generally good-natured, because they tend to demand much less than more intelligent people from marriage.

Vocational immaturity may show itself by a lack of capability for a reasonable job, either the running of a home on the part of a woman or the carrying out of a “breadwinning” job on the part of the man. Either of these may well bring strains on the marriage, and sometimes this situation can be relieved to some extent if the person or persons concerned are willing to accept reasonable training in the particular field.

Emotional immaturity is a very common intra-personal factor in one or both partners concerned in a marital disorder, and some aspects of it have already been mentioned, such as failure in emotional emancipation from parents, and impulsive or unwise choice of mate. Emotional immaturity may show itself in many different ways. A fairly common manifestation is in the sexual attitudes and relationships. In the extreme case homosexuality is likely to cause physical and emotional unfitness for marriage. In the majority of cases homosexuality is regarded as being an acquired rather than a constitutional disorder, and most of the openly homosexual men and women have no desire to marry. But a number of less marked cases of homosexuality are first induced to seek help after marriage when the sexual relationship has been found to be inadequate or quite hopeless.

In addition to these, emotional immaturity may show up in less definite form in what is termed “latent homosexuality.” Every man and woman has some of the chemical and emotional attributes of the opposite sex. In the vigorously “masculine” man and the graciously “feminine” woman, these opposite qualities are not sufficiently marked to cause any disturbance. But sometimes an apparently normal heterosexual man or woman may have sufficient of the opposite qualities to bring about disorders in the sexual and the personal relationships of marriage. Many cases of impotence or partial impotence in men may be explained in this way, and some cases of frigidity in women. Others may be more fittingly regarded as due to some form of neurotic illness, but this is a matter for psychiatric appraisal.

Homosexuality, actual and latent, is regarded by Edmund Bergler, M.D. as primarily fear of the opposite sex rather than primarily attraction to persons of the same sex. If this be true, the attraction to people of the same sex may be caused or intensified by a deep need for companionship and intimacy, which after all is something which all normal people tend to have. It is possible that many cases in which husbands and wives find it difficult to be socially at ease with persons of the opposite sex, and even more when they feel the urge to congregate almost exclusively with members of their own sex, may have their roots in this form of emotional immaturity. The common social practice of men and women remaining in separate groups throughout the evening at a party may be a very mild example of this tendency. Some cases in which husbands for quite plausible reasons devote themselves to “all male” pursuits to the real neglect of their wives and families, or in which wives overdo it with “all female” projects to the neglect of their domestic obligations, may also be indications of this kind of emotional immaturity.

Many of these milder varieties of immaturity will not require -and the people will generally not be willing to undergo- any special medical or psychiatric treatment. If they are willing to face their difficulties and set out to develop their sociability to a more mature level, the marriage relationships will tend to improve to a more satisfactory state. But when the difficulties are more serious and destructive to the marital harmony it may be necessary for the marriage counselor to refer one or both partners for some form of psychotherapy.

b. Immaturity is probably the background factor in most marital disorders, even when the presenting problem seems to be of some other kind. Marriage is meant to be a partnership between adults, and adulthood is not mainly a chronological matter, even though the law finds it necessary to regard people over 21 as adults. In general the personality of the immature person is basically sound, but untrained and undisciplined. This may bring about very intense strains and conflicts in marriage because the give and take and the responsibilities are too great for the undeveloped personality to cope with reasonably.

But as with ignorance, it is often quite possible to help people to overcome this personality deficiency. Considerable time and patience are required, but if the marriage can be held together for the necessary time and the people given enough encouragement and help, the marriage relationship itself can be a very maturing experience. Everyone has had the pleasure of watching quite immature youngsters growing and developing in maturity to a remarkable extent through the stimulus of marriage and parenthood.

Many immature people find it more difficult to develop because their immaturity is combined with some degree of neurotic personality structure that makes them unreasonably demanding, unreasonably anxious, dependent or obsessional. This will be dealt with in a later section of these intra-personal factors.

Immaturity, with or without obvious neurotic trends in the personality, may well cause serious marital disorder because it may have led to hasty or unwise choice of mate. The marriage would then have begun under a great handicap. Even from the point of view of chronological age the qualities which attract a boy or girl at, say, 23 are often very different from those which attract at, say, 18; and it is what attracts at 23 that is more important for continuing marriage. This is not to suggest that people should not marry under 21, but that such early marriages may provide more and deeper challenges to people.

Another common effect of immaturity which may bear heavily on marriage is that either partner or both may have failed to cut loose from emotional dependence on their parents when they are still financially dependent on the parents, or have been so for a long time. In such cases of emotional dependence the parents themselves will often be unduly involved in any marital conflict between the young people, because they feel unable to stand by while their son or daughter is unhappy or in any marital difficulty. In many such cases the entry of parents into the situation, however well-meant and even necessary, may make the conflicts still more intense and less open to reconciliation.

Most of these situations will be helped much more by a trained marriage counselor who is not emotionally involved in the situation than by any parent or close friend. When they come to the marriage counselor the situation often demands great tact and patience, and considerable emotional stability in the counselor-particularly when he has to handle hostile and interfering relatives as well as the two young people in conflict. It helps greatly if he can win the trust and the cooperation of the worried parents, which he has to do without disclosing the confidential material given to him by the partners. Then he might be able to induce the parents to keep their hands off the situation so that he has a more straightforward opportunity with the partners.

The result of this freedom to marry without any necessary safeguards as to personal fitness is that many serious marital disorders are primarily caused by the personal unfitness of one or both partners for marriage. Fortunately this in many-cases is not beyond repair, and it is therefore important for all who seek to help those in marital trouble to be aware of the different kinds of unfitness and of ways by which they can possibly be helped. Some of the most common of them will therefore be discussed.

a. Ignorance or misinformation. With more widespread projects concerned with education for marriage there is probably a steady lessening of ignorance and misinformation. But it is still true in most if not all countries that a large proportion of people who marry do so with the vaguest and often the most distorted ideas about such important matters as the sexual impulses in men and women, the meaning of love, the expression of love in the sexual relationship, the principles of personal relationships, and even about such “practical” matters as home management, cooking, sewing, carpentry, first aid and home nursing. Matters concerning parenthood and child management also have much to do with the general conduct of marriage, and can be suitably dealt with in the early years of marriage, if possible before the children come.

Everyone who marries has received a great deal of information of a kind, but in all too many cases it will have come from sources which are grossly inadequate and often completely misleading, such as the general conversation of their friends, neighbors, colleagues, and, strangely less often, of their parents. This is supplemented by the subtle influences of the mass media, popular novels, “soap opera” on radio and television, and the movies, not to mention the seductive practices in mass advertising. Even many apparently sophisticated and knowing people are found to have some very distorted ideas about some of the essential facts of life and of human relationships, so it has generally been found wise to take nobody for granted in this field.

In addition to correct information about the essential facts relating to sex, love, marriage, home making and parenthood, some training in self-control and in constructive attitudes to these things is essential. It has been found that merely giving information about such matters as sex may only make it more possible for undisciplined people to participate in all kinds of distorted and even abnormal sexual practices. Sex is an energy which needs harnessing and direction as well as knowledge, and this aspect of education for marriage will be dealt with in the next section (“Immaturity”) as will other distorted attitudes.

This difficulty of lack of correct information and knowledge is of course best dealt with by education from earliest childhood onwards, and particularly in a comprehensive premarital preparation, often with groups of young people, and with encouragement of free discussion under wise and understanding leadership. But when it is discovered during counseling in marital disorders that there is considerable ignorance or misinformation about essential matters the counselor must be able to give the necessary information in a simple, natural and reverent manner, and in some cases to put the partners in touch with other sources of information, such as other counselors, or suitable books. But no book will take the place of the personal relationship between counselor and the partners for the passing on of information in the necessary atmosphere of good personal rapport. Part of the training of a marriage counselor is therefore concerned with knowledge of these things, healthy attitudes to them, and ability to communicate them to people in an effective manner.

MARRIAGE HAS BEEN DESCRIBED as the most intimate, delicate and far-reaching relationship between people; and the family as a living, growing, and self-reproducing organism in a two-way relationship with the total environment: physical, cultural, social and spiritual. Human nature and human feelings being what they are there will inevitably be tensions and conflicts in marriage and family life. Successful marriage is not measured by the absence of conflict but by the ability of the partners to find constructive and rational ways of dealing with their conflicts, and growing to greater maturity and harmony together through these experiences.

When there is difficulty in dealing with marital conflicts to the extent that the marital relationship becomes progressively disturbed, it is inevitable that the results will extend beyond the two people involved. Apart from the effects of such disorder on the health, happiness and efficiency of the partners, which are important to society as well as to themselves, there will inevitably be adverse effects on the health and the development of the children, and these may soon become irreversible. If marriage counselors and educators are to be of adequate help to people in marital conflict it is necessary for them to have some over-all concepts of the many inter-related contributory factors in marital disorders, so that they can have some familiarity with the terrain into which they are likely to be led.

For clarity of description it is helpful to think of the most common contributory factors under three headings, the intra-personal, the inter-personal, and the environmental. The intra-personal factors will include those which are concerned with the personalities of the two partners and their fitness in various ways for the stresses and strains of marriage and family life. The inter-personal factors are concerned with the living dynamic relationships between them, and their ways of dealing with tensions and conflicts. The environmental factors are concerned with the influence of the physical, cultural, social and spiritual realities-and unrealities-which bear on the two partners and on their marriage and their family life.

It is quite obvious that defects within the personalities of one or both of the partners will bring about disturbances in their relationships and also in their environment. Disturbances in their relationships will also have some effect, sometimes a profound effect, on their inner personalities and on their environment. And environmental pressures may be serious enough to disturb both their inner personalities and their relationships. It is generally unnecessary for the counselor to disentangle the relative influences of these three sets of factors to any detail-indeed, it would generally be impossible to do so in any case. But if he is aware of the general nature and extent of these three groups of factors and of the kind of influences they can exert on marriage and family living, he is less likely to overlook or disregard them when seeking to understand the feelings and attitudes of the people who come for his help.

One of the most significant facts about modern marriage and the disorders which may emerge in it is that with a few exceptions which hardly ever apply, people over 21 who are unmarried or whose marriage has been legally terminated are free to marry without any safeguards regarding their fitness or suitability for marriage. People under 21 and above a minimum age generally laid down by the law of their country can also marry under these conditions with no safeguard beyond the consent of their parents (which is often obtained under heavy pressure).

Once they are married, however, the doors shut and the exit is barred, even if they find to their mutual disillusionment that they have made a stupid mistake and have come to detest each other. It is of course essential that society should take all possible steps to safeguard its own stability without too much interference with the liberty of its members, and the only practical way to reconcile these two essentials would seem to be the fullest and most adequate preparation for marriage as a universal requirement.

The laws of any country concerning divorce, annulment and judicial separation are admittedly imperfect attempts to do what is basically impossible: to control human attitudes and human behavior by legislation. But every society has found it necessary to put such legal restraints on the dissolution of marriage because the community has an essential stake in its preservation wherever that is possible, and the courts are continually on the lookout for attempts to evade the law by mutual arrangement and the faking of evidence.

The second interview with John began with a report of further relaxation of tension between them. It went on as follows:
c. You feel a bit more optimistic about it?

j. Yes, this is the best hope I’ve had because it seems to go deeper, but I still feel more organized than I like. But somehow Mary seems to be more generally approachable and even cordial. She told me she had a better understanding of how I’ve been feeling, since you and she got down to talking about how we grew up. I hadn’t realized that would be of any great importance.

c. Would you like to tell me something about your own childhood as you see it?

j. Mary told you about Dad walking out, didn’t she? But Mom did a magnificent job in bringing up my sister and me and holding down a job as well. Grannie was a great help and we all managed to get on well together. I’ve only seen Dad about twice since he left-he was a pretty hopeless alcoholic, and he was killed in a motor car accident a few years ago. I’m sure Mom was a lot better without him. She has still been a great help to me when I’ve felt pretty despairing, although she got Mary’s back up. I still feel I owe her more than I can ever repay.

c. You still feel a pretty close relationship with your mother?

j. I’ve felt it more since things became difficult with Mary; and at about that time Mom had to give up her job and she needed more help from me.

c. I’ve noticed that Mary seems to be a maternal sort of person. Could it be that at the beginning she was giving you some good “mothering”?

j. I don’t know about that-she was tremendously attentive and very loving, and she seemed to be able to anticipate most of my needs-that’s what made it so difficult to understand after Jimmy came, when he seemed to take up a bit too much of her attention. I don’t think that’s good for any baby. But perhaps you could call it mothering-and after all she’d been pretty good at that sort of thing with her father and that stupid brother of hers-she still gets him out of an occasional scrape. I don’t like it and I don’t think he’ll ever learn, and his father has never been able to do anything with him. Mary’s father has always been a good natured chap, but he’s weak and utterly ineffectual. Mary used to order him and her brother about till they could hardly call their souls their own.

c. Do you think that could have something to do with the way you felt Mary organized you; that she’d developed the habit of running the house that way, and got a real feeling of satisfaction out of it?”

j. Well, yes, I suppose that’s why she does have such a passion for organizing. But I didn’t notice it much in the early years of our marriage.

c. Could it be that you were getting such a lot of “mothering” attention at that time that you didn’t notice the organizing?

j. And when I missed out on the attention because of the children I began to resent the organizing? I think I can see daylight there. But I still can’t see any reason why I should put up with being managed. I’m not quite in the same category as her weak father and irresponsible brother. I don’t want to be the big shot, but I am supposed to be the head of the house!

c. Do you thing that if you can stand on your own feet a bit more, and not be so dependent on what we’ve called the “mothering” or the attention, it may help Mary to ease up on the organizing?

j. Well, you know I’ve been doing that a bit since I came here last time-it’s only a very short time-but I think I can make up my own mind what I ought to do in the house and the garden, and with the kids, and if Mary starts to disparage it I think I can let her think what she likes about it, without feeling so deeply insulted.

c. If she likes to think you’re an incompetent fool you think you can let her think it without having to convince her immediately that you’re nothing of the kind?

j. I don’t know whether I could go quite that far yet, but I can see what you’re driving at, and I’m determined to have a try at becoming less sensitive to her comments -if she goes on making them-and more steady on my own feet. You know I feel as if a big load has lifted from my shoulders, and I know what I’ve got to do, whatever Mary decides to do about it herself. And I’ve got a feeling that she’s feeling a bit that way too.

Notice in these last interviews with Mary and with John how the counselor waited until there was a natural opening for his attempts at clarification of their feelings, and then how he set out to do it by asking questions, such as “Could it be that -?” rather than making dogmatic statements, such as “I think you feel that way because -.” Dogmatic statements would be likely to stir up some opposition, and the counseling would then become sidetracked into a conflict between counselor and Mary or John. When it is put in the form of a question, Mary or John can easily say, “No, I don’t think that’s quite the way it is,” and the counseling can then proceed to further elucidation without disruption.

#TITLE#Analysing the counseling session with John and Mary#/TITLE#

As previously mentioned this was a fairly straightforward case, and John and Mary were capable of good insight. Also the account given has omitted some of the less applicable elements in the discussions and condensed the material into fewer interviews than would have actually happened. In many cases a great deal of patience is required on the part of the counselor before the two people come to achieve sufficient insight to be able to build a strong relationship. Sometimes one or both have such neurotic personalities that they can’t do much without deeper individual psychotherapy. But this account may give some idea of what is being attempted in marriage counseling, and how a counselor sets out to do it.

John and Mary came together for an interview about ten days after the last session with John, and it was obvious that there was not much more to be done by the counselor. They were able to talk quite frankly about their new insights about themselves and their new understandings of each other, and to laugh good naturedly about John’s choice of someone four years older than himself without realizing that he was looking for another “mother.” And John could also point out that Mary, in choosing a man younger than herself, was gratifying her maternal feelings without altogether realizing it. The counselor asked Mary how she felt about the prospect of John’s asserting himself more, and Mary thought for a few moments, and then made the significant observation, “I think I can do with someone to depend on, and I hope he can do it. The children can do with a strong daddy too!”

It may be noticed that there was no discussion about the sex relationship in this case. This was mainly because neither John nor Mary referred to it at all, and because the counselor felt that they were growing so well in insight and in their relationship that there seemed no reason to ask about it. He was ready to follow their sequence of thought as they expressed themselves, and to accept whatever direction their feelings developed. By accepting their feelings and moving with them all the time the interviews were kept alive, and the two people were able to move forward to better and better understanding. When this acceptance is not offered by the counselor there will often be long pauses in the interviews, and then it is easy for the counselor to begin “fishing,” asking all kinds of questions unrelated to the train of thought. This is generally an expression of the counselor’s anxiety, and it will devitalize the interview and tend to bewilder the people being interviewed.

Finally in the case of John and Mary it is easy to see why all the previous efforts of well meaning relatives, and the most genuine efforts of John and Mary themselves, were doomed to tragic failure. Until they could come to realize why each of them felt that way, and how much they were at the mercy of their uncritical assumptions and their unrecognized emotional needs, any attempt at reconciliation was sabotaged by the eruption of some of these hidden elements in the situation. By winning their confidence through giving each of them a full and attentive and accepting hearing, the counselor was then able to look with them at some of these unrecognized elements in such a way that they could face them and deal with them. That is the kind of approach that the marriage counselor makes. It has been fully confirmed that when people have been able to unburden themselves of their intense and conflicting feelings then, and only then, do they become able to “see,” and to respond to “sweet reason.”

This case record gives some confirmation to the growing feeling among workers in this field, that people are more likely to come to a more successful partnership by being helped to find their own way through their difficulties than by any direct advice from even the most “expert” counselor. There is certainly a place for directive advice, but it is found that the more experience any counselor has in marital or other kinds of counseling, the less prone he is to give advice, and the more effective his counseling becomes.

A good definition of marriage counseling is that given by Emily Hartshorne Mudd, M.S.W., Ph.D., Director of the Marriage Council of Philadelphia: “Marriage counseling is defined as the process whereby a professionally trained person assists two persons (engaged or marriage partners) to develop abilities in resolving, to some workable degree, the problems that trouble them in their interpersonal relationships as they move into marriage, live with it, or (in a small number of instances) move out of it. The focus of the counselor’s approach is the relationship between the two people in the marriage rather than, as in psychiatric therapy, the reorganizing of the personality structure of the individual. The theoretical framework behind this approach presents the following hypothesis: If an individual can experience, during the counseling process, new ways of understanding of himself and his marriage partner and more satisfying ways of using himself in his daily relationships in marriage and with his family, he should be able to apply these acquired abilities to other problem situations as these arise in his daily living.”1

As we shall see this definition may involve some clarification of the term “professionally trained person.” In America the organized marriage counseling agencies are staffed by university graduates in one of several fields who have undertaken special training and gained experience in marriage counseling. In Great Britain, Australia, and some other countries much of the work is being carried out with acknowledged success by people without university degrees, who have however been very carefully “selected” and given what is tantamount to “professional training and experience.” With this clarification the definition can be well applied to the work of marriage counseling everywhere.

The work of the marriage counselor touches that of the psychiatrist on one side, where it comes into contact with intra-personal disorders which may bring strains to the marital relationship; and that of the social worker on the other side, where it comes up against environmental strains on the relationship. It also comes into contact with the work of religious organizations in that many of the strains on the marital relationship have to do with religious attitudes. The more the marriage counselor can work together with each of these professions the better his work will be. Before discussing the actual work of marriage counseling it would seem advisable to give some attention to the many interlocking contributory factors in marital disorder, and this will be the subject of the next chapter.

1 “Man and Wife” edited by Emily Hartshorne Mudd, M.S.W., PhJD. and Aaron Krich, Ed.D. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1957, p. 211.

Now that the children are beginning to feel all this-and are likely to be still more deeply affected-it is even more important that they should be helped to find their way through the distressing tangle. How can the stalemate be resolved? This may become clearer as we go on to look at the remaining interviews with John and Mary, beginning with the second interview with Mary.

After the usual kind of greeting the counselor asked Mary how she felt about the situation, to which Mary replied:

M. I don’t know what you did to John the other day, but he has been a new man, much more relaxed and communicative, and I feel better too. But I still feel that there’s an underlying tension, and it wouldn’t take much to make it burst. I feel a bit as if I’m walking on a tightrope, and I’m trying to be very tactful. c. Things are better, but you still have to watch your step?

M. How can we get past that kind of barrier, so that we don’t have to hold ourselves in?

c. People who do this work find that it often helps to look at the backgrounds of those in trouble, to find out what they feel about the husband’s and the wife’s roles in marriage, and possibly why they feel as they do. Would you like to tell me something about yourself, and your earlier life?

M. I’m not quite sure what you would want, and it’s not very interesting, but I’ll try. I suppose the biggest thing that happened to me was that mother died suddenly when I was 16. I felt that the bottom had dropped out of my life, because she was the one person I had ever been able to lean on. You see Dad is a very good person, but he was never very strong, and my brother, he’s two years younger than I am, has always been an irresponsible impulsive boy who had a passion for getting himself into trouble.

c. So you must have felt the loss of mother very keenly

M. Yes, and it wasn’t improved by the fact that I had been all set to go to the University, but I felt I had to give that up and look after Dad and Harry, my brother. Mother had trained me pretty well in cooking, so I didn’t find it too difficult, and Dad was most appreciative-he said several times that I had saved his life! He was very cooperative, and always came home punctually, but Harry was always difficult, he used to come home at all hours, and he was very careless and untidy. But I gradually got him trained so that at least I could run the home properly. If he came home late without telling me he had to get his own meal! He got into some pretty bad scrapes, and once I even had to go and bail him out when Dad was away.

c. You felt you had to train him pretty well so that you could run the home properly, but it was easier with Dad?

M. Well, if I was going to give up everything I’d wanted to do to look after them, I felt it was up to them to cooperate. But I got things well organized so that I could run the home well and also have some opportunity for some social life of my own. You see Dad’s friends were all out of my age group, and Harry’s friends didn’t attract me one bit.

c. You felt a lot better when you got things organized?

M. Yes, I even managed to take a few university courses, but of course any full course would have been too much with my domestic responsibilities. But I felt I’d saved something out of the wreck, and I made some good friends. But with all I had to do I felt worried sometimes that I’d never get married. All my girl friends from school had gone off, and here was I, with a family of two helpless males and no husband.

c. You had all the responsibilities of motherhood without the pleasure and support of a husband?

M. That was just what I felt, but eventually of course I met John. He was the younger brother of one of my school friends. At first I didn’t take to him at all, he was very much a “mother’s boy.” You see his father had walked out when he was about ten, and he and his sister were brought up by his mother and his grandmother. They just idolized him, and seem to have lavished everything on him. His mother still idolizes him and demands a lot of attention from him. Looking back now I realize that John never had to stand on his own feet, he got everything he wanted, and he often behaves now as if he believes he has a right to other people’s love and cooperation.

c. You feel he never had to win the love and cooperation of people while he was growing up. Did he take much initiative in winning your love when he was courting you?

M. As I see it now I don’t think he did. I’m afraid I rather took pity on him at the time he first showed real interest in me, and I really wasn’t very hard to get. I felt that we clicked almost at once after he began to show interest, and I still felt that way till he started to get moody after Jimmy came. Then I felt he was demanding more attention than I could give him. He couldn’t seem to understand how much the baby took my time and attention, and I couldn’t neglect the baby.
c. Could it be that you were really mothering him at the beginning, and that he felt neglected when Jimmy came and needed your mothering?

M. I’ve sometimes wondered about that, and as we’ve been talking it seems to make sense. You know he’s four years younger than I am.

c. And he’d been used to being mothered; while you’d been doing a lot of mothering to your father and brother?
M. It’s extraordinary, now you mention it, how our two past histories interlocked with one another how my satisfaction at mothering clicked with his need to be mothered-and how lost he must have felt when there were two helpless children to take all my mothering!

This second interview with Mary concluded with considerable growth in her understanding of John’s difficulties, and the beginnings of better insight into her own attitudes. But so far she hasn’t been able to see her own passion for organizing John, and the counselor has not made any attempt to confront her with it. It is found to be much more effective when people can come to achieve insight into their own destructive attitudes and to get some idea of why they have had them, than it is to attempt to confront them with such matters, at least at the beginning.

When the main emotional unburdening has been completed and the rapport with the counselor is good it may be tempting for the counselor to say, for example, to Mary, “John feels that you are organizing him too much, and that’s one thing that makes him sore.” This is not likely to be very effective because Mary will probably be unable to see herself as others see her, and she will probably have rejected this idea already when John has tried to put it to her. A likely response to the counselor’s effort at confronting her with it will be, “John’s exaggerating this altogether; he has that stupid idea on the brain!” What can the counselor do then? Is he to argue it out with Mary and have the whole interview sidetracked into a conflict? Or is he to confront John later with the information that Mary doesn’t agree with his ideas-which of course John knows already from his discussions with her? “Tale bearing” of this kind is not the function of the counselor, and it is apt to lead him into troubled waters.

If John and Mary each discuss the other’s faults, and ignore their own (as seen by the other one) it is generally best, after the main emotional tensions have subsided to some extent, to arrange an interview with the two of them together-with mutual consent, of course. Then if, for example, John brings up Mary’s excessive organizing, and Mary tries to discount it, John can answer her on the spot with particular examples. In this way the main points of conflict can be brought into the open and ultimately accepted by both of them, even if at this stage there is no apparent reconciliation.

After such a joint interview further sessions can be carried out with each alone, and an opportunity given for each to talk about the reasons and motives for these attitudes, so that better insight might be achieved. Further joint interviews can be arranged when there are any points of mutual concern to be clarified, and also later when any positive plans for the future are being considered.

If the first joint interview is held before the emotional tensions are partly relieved it might only serve to increase the tensions and inflict further wounds. Such interviews need be handled carefully, and if there seems to be undue heightening of tension it may be best to call a halt in the joint interview and to go on with individual interviews for a further period.

In the present case the growth of insight has so far been as good as one could expect, and the logical step is to have a second session with John, with the idea of learning how he sees his own background and that of Mary. This “two-dimensional” perception of backgrounds and of role perceptions in marriage is much more helpful than any “one-dimensional” perception, and it will make for much better clarification in further discussion with John and Mary.

The letter to John ran something like this:- “Dear Mr. Smith, Your wife has been to see me for help in the marital situation that has arisen between you. I think I could be of more help if I could have the opportunity of hearing how you feel about it. If you can manage to come for a talk I would be glad if you would make an appointment at some mutually suitable time. Yours faithfully,.”

John came quite willingly in due course. He looked a normal enough person as he came in and began to tell his story.

j. I appreciated your direct invitation to come, and I must say Mary seems more relaxed since she came to you. I’m worried about the whole situation too, and I suppose I’ve put my foot in it pretty badly at times, but I’m fed to the teeth with Mary’s attempts to dominate me, and to have everything her way. I’ve given up the attempt to make her realize that. Nothing I can say will ever convince her.

c. You feel you can’t call your soul your own?

j. That’s just about it. She was all right till the kids came, but since then I’ve been left out. All her attention goes to them, and the whole house has to revolve around them. She has worked out a rigid routine to the last detail, and nothing must ever interfere with it. She’s always complaining of being overworked, but I’m sure she makes most of the difficulties for herself. The house is always in a mess in spite of the routine, and there isn’t any comfort in it. It’s not a home any more, and if I try to do anything to tidy it up it’s always wrong. I never hear the end of it when she can’t find something I might have put away. I’m not supposed to know anything about running a house.

c. Everything has to be sacrificed for the children, and you and the home mean nothing, whatever you try to do about it?

j. Yes, and it’s not only in the house. I’ve got to work things at the office so that I never disturb the home routine. If I’m home even twenty minutes late I have to face a heavy cross examination about it. Even when I’m home on time Mary demands to know everything I’ve done, where I’ve been and who I’ve met, and I object to that on principle. But it makes no difference, and all I can do is to get behind the paper in self defense. It would serve her right if I didn’t come home till later and stayed and had a drink with the boys. But I don’t want to make any more barriers between us if I can help it.

c. You feel pretty fed up about it, but you’re trying to keep the relationship intact?

j. Yes, and I still have some glimmerings of hope that things might be improved; that’s why I’m here of course. But after our previous efforts I can’t say that I’m terribly optimistic. An uncle of Mary’s, who seems to think he’s an expert in these matters, came to see us some months ago, and gave me what he regarded as “a good talking to.” But he didn’t seem interested in how I felt about it, and in the end I told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. But I suppose I can’t talk, because my mother had done much the same thing to Mary a bit earlier, and that hadn’t helped at all.

c. So you felt a bit skeptical about whether any outside person could help you?

j. I’m afraid I did, but I realize they were both a bit prejudiced. But we had two really genuine efforts to find a way through the trouble about a year ago without any lasting result. We talked it out better than we’ve ever been able to do since, and we agreed to let bygones be bygones and to try to make a fresh start on a better footing. But it looks as if Mary just can’t help organizing me and everything, and I can’t bear being organized; and the old tensions were on again within a few weeks. So I felt I had some reason to be a bit despairing about the prospects, until Mary decided to come to you. I must say I appreciate the way you’ve given me such a good hearing, but I can’t see yet how it can help us to a better relationship.

c. You’re still wondering how this sort of thing can help?

j. Yes, I’m afraid I am, but down deep I’m sure Mary is genuinely trying to work it out, and God knows I want to do it as long as I can keep some remnants of my personality. After all, we’re both reasonable people and I love Mary more than I can say, even though I know she must sometimes have her doubts about it. And I think she still loves me, in spite of all the rows.

c. You feel pretty sure then that there are some basic reasons for hope. Enough to carry on in some more sessions, so that we can explore the situation a little more deeply?

j. Yes, that seems reasonable, and I feel better for having got all those things off my chest. Would you like me to make another appointment?

c. Mary is coming again early next week, so perhaps you could come a few days later, and tell me a bit more about yourself and how you feel.

In this summary of the first interview with John, notice again how the counselor has picked out the feelings from John’s narrative, and shown acceptance of them. In this way he has gained John’s confidence and made the deeper explorations which will be necessary in the future interviews much more straightforward. So far neither John nor Mary has shown much realization of their own destructive attitudes, nor has either of them been able to see much light about ways of improving their relationship. But with good rapport between the counselor and each of them, the necessary foundation has been laid.

It is clear from their attitudes that John and Mary are each at heart reasonable people, with sound personality structures, but that they are each unable to fulfil their roles adequately in marriage because of uncritical assumptions, habitual attitudes and emotional needs which have brought them into conflict. They have made efforts to overcome the conflicts, but these have been superficial, and have left the deeper factors unrealized and uncorrected. While this was the case they were doomed to failure.

As they were unable to see their own false attitudes any criticism would only put them still more on the defensive, and even the best advice would generally be futile, because neither would be able to carry it out while the false attitudes were uncorrected. Here then are two good people, each hurt, bewildered and almost despairing, in deep and continuing conflict.

With this general background the question “What is marriage counseling?” might best be answered by giving a brief and rather summarized account of an actual case of a type sufficiently common to represent many cases which come to marriage counselors. Actually this case is built up from more than one, and is sufficiently disguised as to be unrecognizable.

The case is that of “John and Mary Smith,” aged 28 and 32, married six years, with two children, four and two years old. Mary has come for help, and after settling in her chair she begins her story. M. I’m worried and depressed about our marriage, I’ve tried everything I can think of to make things work out between us, and I’ve just about reached the end of my rope.

c. You’re feeling pretty low. Would you like to talk about it?

M. Things were good for a time-until our first child was born. We both wanted children and looked forward to having them, but from the time Jimmy came, four years ago, John has been different. I managed to cope with the situation until Betty came two years ago, but from then on, when I needed his help and support more than ever, he’s been unbearable. He’s practically always moody and touchy, and he has begun to get into awful tempers over the slightest thing. I know I’m no angel, and I can take a fair amount of it, but now he has started to storm and rage at the children, even for absurdly trivial things, and they’re getting terrified of him. Jimmy, the older one, is reacting with nightmares, which he didn’t have before, and he gets asthma when the tensions are particularly bad.

c. It’s the effect on the children that upsets you most?

M. Yes, that’s the last straw, and it has made me feel that I must have some help. But even apart from that I’ve been concerned and even frightened about John. He has had some terrible rages recently and in one of them the other day he got an absolutely horrible look in his eyes, as if he might be going insane. He beat me about a month ago in one of his rages, and seemed sorry afterwards, but the old moodiness was back again within a few days. Something seems to be eating him, but I can’t get any idea of what it can be. He won’t talk things over, he either gets into a towering rage or just buries himself in his paper if I try.

c. You feel there must be something wrong with him and you’re worried about what he’ll do next?

M. I don’t know about anything wrong with him, but something must be getting into him and making him like that. The house and garden are getting badly neglected now; he used to be very keen on the garden at least, but lately he doesn’t seem to care. I’m wondering whether things are happening at his work too, he has generally been reasonably popular at the office, but Tom Clarke, one of his best friends, was asking me the other day whether his health has been all right apparently they had noticed him pretty moody and depressed there too. There must be something festering inside him, and he’s too good a chap at heart to get like this. I still love him, but he seems to be doing all he can to kill my feelings for him. I can’t understand what can be doing it, but I just wonder how much more I can stand.

c. You feel that basically he’s good, but that something has got hold of him, and it’s getting a bit close to the breaking point? Does he know you’ve come for help?

M. Oh yes, he knows about it. He thinks I need help more than he does, and he doesn’t seem to think his conduct is bad enough to need help. He was happy for me to come, but I don’t think he will be at all willing to come.

c. Would you mind if I wrote and invited him to come for a talk?

M. I’d be most grateful if you would, and I hope he will come. This is a brief summary of the main parts of the first interview with Mary. Notice first how the counselor picked out the feelings that Mary was expressing, and responded to them rather than to the facts of her narrative, and with complete acceptance of them. Mary felt encouraged in this way to go on unburdening her feelings in a manner which she had not previously been able to do with anyone. Notice how, as she did so, she came to the expression of some more positive feelings, “He’s too good a chap at heart to get like this. I still love him.” No attempt was made in this first interview to turn Mary’s thoughts to any possible way in which she might have been provoking John, and no attempt was made to find out any details of Mary’s or John’s background. Any such attempts might well have blocked the flow of feeling at this point, so they are kept for possible later attention.

The new approach differs from the older methods in many important respects.

In the first place it is conceived and carried out more as a therapeutic or healing than as an educational activity. It may, of course, still include some education; about, for example, the main principles underlying human relationships, and especially the most intimate relationships of marriage and parenthood.
This attempt at the healing of a “sick” marriage, like the healing of a sick person, rests on the conviction, confirmed more and more by experience, that the essential factor in all healing is a natural healing force with which the “healer” seeks always to cooperate.

It is found that the giving of advice, which is implied in the definitions of “counseling,” does not generally achieve the desired end, however much the partners may be anxious for it. In almost every case the troubled partners will already have had a great deal of very “good,” plausible, but often conflicting advice, which they have found to be either impossible to carry out, or ineffective when they have carried it out. Even then many of them come for counseling in the belief or hope that the “expert” will be able to hear what they have to say, and then give them better advice than any they have previously had.

On the other hand it has been abundantly confirmed that when a counselor can achieve with troubled people the kind of personal relationship in which they can progressively unburden their strained affronted and conflicting feelings, they then come to see themselves and their conflicts more clearly and objectively, and are in a much better position to make their own decisions about what they shall do. Marital disorders are practically always dominated by emotions, and emotions are “blinding” things, “which distort people’s judgment. Until people in the grip of intense and conflicting feelings can pour them out to someone who is willing to give them a full, genuine, attentive and accepting hearing, they will generally be unable to apply “sweet reason,” either from their own thinking or from even the most “expert” advice.

The “sick” marriage can best be healed when the partners are helped to help themselves, when the counselor can sit down patiently with them and give them the chance to “see” themselves and their partners through the previously blinding mists of emotion, and then to apply “sweet reason” freed from the distortions of upset feelings, to their common task of rebuilding -or, if they see fit, dissolving-their partnership. Their decisions may be assisted by the offering of information when it is desired and seems appropriate, but the modern counselor feels very diffident about giving advice except in very special circumstances which will be discussed in later sections of this book.

A second difference from the older methods of marriage counseling is that modern counseling does not set out to interfere in people’s marital troubles, nor does it indulge in coercion of any kind. Help is offered, but as in all healing it is more likely to be of value when it is sought and accepted by a willing “patient.” Marriage counselors are not in any sense “managers” or “do-good-ers,” and they will never “butt in,” even when requested to do so by an anxious relative. They will offer their services, and then leave it to the people to decide whether or not they will accept them.

This fact, however, needs to be considered in relation to the growing conviction that the community has a definite stake in the success or failure of marriage, that marriage is a community as well as a private affair. To the extent that this is so the community has some responsibility to many people who are in great need of help, but who, for various reasons, are unwilling to seek counseling. There is a growing feeling in many communities that community organizations, such as the courts or possibly the Church, may have the public responsibility of putting judicial or moral pressure on some such couples to discuss their conflicts with a trained marriage counselor. Such discussions, although most appropriately conducted by a trained marriage counselor in a reasonably permissive atmosphere, are not quite the same as marriage counseling because the people come under external pressure. They are distinguished from counseling by being described as “conciliation.” To conciliate is defined as “to gain, or win over; to gain the love or good will of such as have been indifferent or hostile; to pacify” (Chambers’ Twentieth Century Dictionary,1932)-

When two people are persuaded to come for marriage conciliation, for example, by a divorce court judge, the first task of the counselor is to try to win their confidence-if possible to such a degree that they come to desire counseling. Then the conciliation gives place to counseling in its best sense. This winning of confidence of two previously unwilling or indifferent people requires more general skill, experience and patience, and other good qualities of personality than are even required for counseling.

A third difference between modern counseling and the older traditional methods is that the modern counselor does not feel competent or in any way disposed to judge either of the partners in conflict, or to impose his own moral values on them. He may ask them what they think the possible consequences of any attitude or action may be, and why they would want to do what they are doing, but in general the counselor sees his function as that of looking with each of them at the problem and the whole relationship, and accepting their feelings and their attitudes, and their conduct within the law. In this way their ultimate attitudes are dictated by their own consciences and by their views about the total situation.

Modern counseling then seeks to offer a service of such a nature that people are helped to help themselves; to provide an accepting relationship of a kind that will encourage each person to express his feelings in a permissive atmosphere, and progressively to achieve better insight into many aspects of the marital relationship. In this way each of them has the opportunity to make his own decisions as to what to do about it in an atmosphere of realism rather than of distorted emotion.

Such counseling has proved itself by far the best approach to people in marital conflict, as long as it is carried out by adequately trained people of suitable maturity and emotional stability. But it is not regarded as the only solution to marital problems. It is obvious that in this field as in others “prevention is better than cure,” and modern marriage counseling is conceived as one important part of a comprehensive project for promotion of better marriage and family living. This project includes first-class universal comprehensive education and preparation for marriage and parenthood, which is so far in the earliest stages of its development, and also continuing research into marriage and family relationships, and into human relationships in general.

THE WORD “COUNSELING” is defined in many dictionaries as “giving advice” or “warning.” People in trouble in their marital relationships have always been the recipients of all kinds of well-meant advice, and in that “educational” sense marriage counseling is probably as old and as universal as marriage itself. It has been carried on through the centuries and in many parts of the world by interested relatives and friends, and by ministers, doctors, teachers, lawyers and others with varying degrees of professional formality.

In previous centuries any marriage counseling had as its primary purpose the helping of wives to make the best of difficult situations in male-dominated “partnerships”; or possibly, in some cases, inducing husbands to be a little more understanding, sympathetic and tolerant to their wives and children. In such autocratic marriages wives were largely forced to make the best of whatever kind of marital situation they were drawn into, and marriage counseling was largely concerned with giving direct advice-or even using coercion. This attitude to marriage counseling still exists in some quarters.

But the steep rise in the divorce rate, and the large but unassessable separation rate over the last half century, suggest that these traditional methods of counseling are not sufficiently effective in the face of the strains of modern marriage. And this is amply confirmed by the experience of workers in many special fields of social service who come into direct or indirect contact with marital and family conflict. This has sometimes led to the belief that the situation is not open to remedy, that the relationship between husband and wife is too private and too personal to be accessible to any community welfare project.

In recent years, however-beginning in America in 1929, in Great Britain in 1938, and in Australia in 1947—there has been a gradual emergence and development of a new and much more rational approach to the whole project of helping people in serious marital and family conflict. This newer approach has been and is still being based on the practical experience of people of varying professional backgrounds, and it is being continually tested by trial and error experience rather than by theoretical ideas. It has borrowed from many basic disciplines, such as psychology, religion, medicine, sociology, education, psychiatry, and anthropology, and has been helped greatly by the technical resource of the tape recorder (in research institutes), through which interviews can be preserved with many of their emotional overtones, and from which many lessons can be learned.