Gender: A critical factor in a couples group

Abstract

Increasingly, gender has become a central theme in couples treatment. This reflects our society, in which marital roles have become vague, ambiguous, and often in flux. The balance or division of labor that couples achieve is tenuous and creates tensions in which power emerges as an explicit dimension of couples' conflict. Furthermore, the abdication of formerly traditional expectations (for a man to pursue his career with wholehearted, self-sacrificing support from his wife, and for a woman to be financially secure and a full-time parent) erodes the marital bond and creates hurts and disappointments that are not easily healed. Inevitably, this broadens the scope of marital dissatisfactions commonly presented in the consulting room and requires from therapists a sensitivity to gender. This paper attempts to identify the gender differences that evolve from cultural imperatives. These differences have always been obvious, but curiously ignored in clinical work. For purposes of discussion, gender differences will be divided into internal/psychological and external/behavioral aspects. These concepts will be defined and elaborated. It is essential to underscore rather than ignore the differences, because it is through them that ultimately balance of power is achieved in the marital quid pro quo. We will illustrate Excerpts from this paper were presented at the American Family Therapy Association meeting in Montreal, 1988. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Henry Grunebaum,

Solution‐focused Couples Therapy Groups: An Empirical Study

“…A growing body of literature on couples therapy has explored a variety of theoretical orientations, including psychodynamic theory (Feld and Urman-Klein, 1993;Kaslow, 1981), the integration of systemic and emotionally focused therapies (Goldman and Greenberg, 1992), cognitive restructuring (Huber and Milstein, 1985), the integration of communication skills training and emotionally focused couples therapy (James, 1991), behavioural marital therapy (Jacobson, 1984;Jacobson and Addis, 1993), behavioural-cognitive therapy (Montag and Wilson, 1992), and communication and conflict management (Gottman, 1979;Gottman and Krokoff, 1989). However, only behavioural marital therapy, and more recently emotion-focused couple therapy (James, 1991), have been empirically tested to a significant degree.…”