1. What Is Marriage Counseling?

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.

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.

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 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. 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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