The family provides a healthy context for growth and reform. The function of the family is to support the character formation of its members while creating among them the sense of belonging. There have always been several views about the family with healthy and unhealthy functions. What is present in all these views is that a healthy family is a family in which the spouses are in a healthy and effective relationship. However, most of the couples who attend counseling centers state that their main problems are relationship problems and conflicts. So, there have been always necessary to have a tool for measuring the concept of conflict and its dimensions in every cultural context. To meet this need, the questionnaire of marital conflict has been provided which primary from involves 42 questions in 7 subscales; which, in the present research, it has been tried, to evaluate another one of the main dimensions of marital conflict, decreased effective contact, by adding 12 questions to the primary questionnaire. Then, on its confirmatory factor analysis, the present questionnaire was filled out by 270 participants. The results are indicative of optimal psychometric properties (α=0.96), and accepted clinical and scholarly applications.

The world is changing very fast toward cultural pluralism. It is predicted that most of the societies will be more diverse in 21st century. Cultural differences denied for centuries in therapeutic interventions are no more acceptable. Multicultural counseling and therapy are in fact a strong trend in response to this urgent need. That is the reason for multiculturalism to be considered the fourth force in psychology. All counseling and therapy issues and interventions are somewhat cross-cultural. How a client views the world is important insofar as it contrasts with the counselor's. Many Eastern and Western cultures are considered different according to different perspectives. Family as a powerful social institution is the matrix of cultural identity of its members. In recent years, culture turned to occupy a key position in family therapy. Couples have learned to identify with cultural values and biases of their own families throughout their childhood. Family counselors and therapists as well as all their counterparts need to develop activities and intervention techniques to counteract these biases. Development of multiculturalism transformed how many therapists think and work with families. This article deals with cultural issues and dementions of counseling and therapy East and West, with more emphasis on couples and families.