* to reduce symptoms such as emotional distress or behavioral problems: ten to fifteen sessions
* to improve communication habits: twenty-five to thirty sessions over six to eight months
* to restructure relationships so that members of the family system will have more independence and will cultivate an awareness that they do have separate identities: forty sessions or more
WHAT MARRIAGE AND
FAMILY THERAPIES ARE LIKE
Marriage therapy and family therapy are distinct from group therapy in two important ways. First, unlike in group therapy the clients in marriage or family therapy have a shared history and, if therapy is successful, will often be able to enjoy a shared future. Second, in marriage and family therapy, the therapist is more active and directive than in group therapy. Any changes made by members of a group come about because of interactions among the group members; a group therapist acts as a moderator or facilitator, while the role of a marriage or family therapist resembles that of a teacher.
Marriage and family therapy focuses on present interactions between husband and wife or among family members. It is not that the past is judged to be unimportant, but it is not generally useful to pay a great deal of attention to what has already happened. What causes problems now are the current patterns and habits of interaction in the family or marriage. A wife may have been drinking for fifteen years because her mother undermined her sense of self-confidence, but the fact is that she no longer lives with her mother. However, she did choose to live with a man who continued her mother's pattern of undermining abuse. A marriage therapist will focus on present difficulties and, by doing this, may be able to help her resolve her drinking problem by improving a troubled relationship with her husband.
Jay Haley (1923-2007), a leading marriage and family therapist, has expressed the belief that concentrating on feelings and thinking will not lead to change, that empathy on the part of the therapist does not correct problems, and that insight often just provides an excuse for intellectual rationalization and game-playing.[[1]]
[[1]] Jay Haley, "Marriage Therapy," in Gerald D. Erickson and Terrance P. Hogan, eds., Family Therapy: An Introduction to Theory and Technique (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1972), pp. 180-210.
Because the patterns of behavior of a troubled couple or family tend to be very rigid, therapists have found that strongly directive techniques are most effective. Their focus is on developing interventions—or therapeutic strategies—that will have a real impact on the complex patterns of interaction that have come to paralyze a couple or a family.