Behavioral Marriage Therapy: II. Empirical Perspective

Abstract

Two recent published reviews of research on behavioral marriage therapy stimulated us to supplement these accounts with additional relevant data. First, we place research on behavioral couples therapy in the broader context of outcome research on nonbehavioral marital therapy. We then summarized the results of 23 studies of behavioral couples therapy not included in these previous reviews and conclude that these additional data on controlled and comparative studies do little to enhance the current empirical status of efficacy of behavioral marriage therapy and in no case do they establish the superiority of social learning approaches. It is concluded that an open mind to all sources of data on the efficacy of marital therapy is needed if the field is to make meaningful advances.

Behavioral Marriage Therapy. IV. Take Two Aspirin and Call Us in the Morning

“…Jacobson and Weiss assert that the readers of the Gurman and Kniskern (22) paper are being led down the empirical garden path because of our “faulty scholarship.” Their most prominent ill‐founded accusations are (a) that we “frequently misinterpret” both the procedural details and findings of BMT studies; (b) that we do not know the difference between theoretical frameworks and treatment structures; (c) that we accept the existence of an “illusion” of a nonbehavioral marital therapy; and (d) that we cite research studies that we have never read. These are serious matters, if indeed they are true.…”

“…While Jacobson and Weiss claim that only five of the studies listed in Gurman and Kniskern's (22) Table I included control groups, this simply is not true: the studies of Becking (2), Epstein and Jackson (13), Fisher (14), Harrell and Guerney (24), Roberts (49), and Wieman (62) all contained such control groups. We did, in fact, include Cotton's (10) study in this category but should not have done so since Cotton used an attention‐placebo condition rather than a no‐treatment condition (see Gurman and Kniskern's Table I, Footnote c).…”

“…First, the studies we cite as conjoint are claimed to confuse treatment structures and theoretical models, i.e., we fail to differentiate between the two. This is a preposterous assessment, since in both our original review (19), as well as in the Gurman and Kniskern paper (22) in this issue, we explicitly discussed conjoint therapy under the broader heading of “nonbehavioral marital therapy.” When we discussed “approaches characterized by their structure” (Jacobson and Weiss' phrase), i.e., conjoint, conjoint group, individual, concurrent/collaborative, we similarly made explicit that none of them was characterized by the use of social learning theory models, i.e., that none of the treatments was behaviorally oriented. Thus, to argue as Jacobson and Weiss have, that since “behavior therapy is usually conjoint therapy…[we should logically have placed] it in the nonbehavioral category,” is a leap of logic that overwhelms us.…”

Behavioral Marriage Therapy. III. The Contents of Gurman et al. May Be Hazardous to Our Health

“… This paper was written as a reply to a critique of behavioral marital therapy (BMT) by Gurman, Kniskern, and Knudson (6, 7). The reply is divided into four sections.…”

“…It was with enthusiastic anticipation, then, that we studied the contribution of Gurman, Kniskern, and Knudson (6, 7), hoping to find a reasoned, factual appraisal of what has become, by their own evaluation, a highly influential approach to marriage therapy. Gurman and his associates (5, 7) have been the chroniclers of and the gatekeepers for this burgeoning literature, with contributions that have bordered on the encyclopedic (e.g., 5). Their eclectic, broad‐based critiques of the behavioral approaches, especially those of Weiss and his associates at the Oregon Marital Studies Program, no doubt will be influential among nonbehavioral audiences.…”