The eight session cognitive-behavioral treatment model presented here patterns what may seem like a formless array of problems into a coherent set of tasks for the practitioner.

A step-by-step approach to making your marriage loving again.

This book will help counselors understand and deal with the typical problems that arise in a marriage. The approach is to offer not merely solutions, but biblical solutions. Chapter by chapter, each problem that is brought into focus is addressed by Scripture, and a solution arising from Scripture is developed. Unless one understands what a biblical marriage is supposed to be, it is difficult to solve marriage problems. For that reason, Dr. Adams spends the first few chapters developing a biblical model. Then he treats many of the specific kinds of problems that typically arise : life patterns, priorities, children, sex roles, in-laws, and so forth. - Back cover.

I know of no better guide for couples who genuinely desire a maturing relationship.M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled A remarkable bookthe most incisive and persuasive I have ever read on the knotty problems of marriage relationships. Ann Roberts, former president, Rockefeller Family Fund

First Published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Help your marital therapy clients become more supportive of their partners! As a therapist, you see many unhappy couples who long for the loving support that used to be the touchstone of their relationship. Treating Marital Stress: Support-Based Approaches helps you restore that support, beginning with detailed descriptions of the five major patterns of marital distress and continuing with a comprehensive training manual that includes figures, case studies, and samples of possible dialogues between clients and therapists. Step-by-step discussion of the first five sessions with a hypothetical couple provide you with the tools you'll need to help your clients learn to work together as a team, manage their anger, and communicate effectively with each other. Treating Marital Stress shows you the best ways to: work with a reluctant spouse use empathic probing to make a connection with each client design homework assignments so spouses can work on individual improvements point out problematic behaviors within sessions through 'here and now' interventions reframe conflicts to reduce defensiveness help clients accept responsibility for themselves and avoid placing blame Other chapters discuss how you can assign behavioral tasks, get the couple to focus on their objectives, and predict and move beyond emotional obstacles to healing. This helpful volume also explores the outcome data from a study on support-focused marital theory conducted in a university setting. Author Robert Rugel, PhD writes: “A spouse who is on the receiving end of support will feel loved and valued by the partner. That spouse will also know that the partner can be counted on to be there when help is needed. As a result, security and trust develop in the relationship.” You can be there to help spouses look at each other differently and learn to trust and support each other once more.

Family and marital therapies are rapidly becoming highly used methods of treatment of mental disorders and are no longer ancillary methods to individual psychotherapy. The last few decades have brought about an increasing awareness of the fact that, excluding organic etiology, practically all mental disorders are caused, fostered, and/or related to faulty interpersonal relations. As a rule, the .earlier in life one is exposed to noxious factors, the more severe is the damage. Thus, early child-parents' and child-siblings' interactions are highly relevant determinants of mental health and mental disorder. Moreover, parents themselves do not live in a vacuum. Their marital interaction significantly contributes to their own mental health or to its decline, and parent-child relationships are greatly influenced by the nature of intraparental relationships. Parental discord, conflicts, and abandonment affect the child's personality development. Thus, family and marital therapy is more than therapy; it is an important contribution to the prevention of mental disorder. The present volume is comprised of three parts. The first, primarily theoretical, analyzes the fundamental aspects of marital and family therapy. The second part describes the various therapeutic techniques and the last deals with several specific issues. It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to my coeditor, Dr. George Stricker. Without his thorough and devoted efforts, this volume could not have come into being. I am also profoundly indebted to our consulting editors, Dr. James Framo, Dr.