Education Translation

• Counseling
• Counseling
• Marriage Counselor
• Marriage Conflict
• Psychiatrist
• Psychologist
• Therapist
• Marital Therapy
• Love in Marriage
• Sex in Marriage

Taken all together, the psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and marital counselors-regardless of their qualifications for the job of treating sick marriages-are not numerous enough to take care of the public’s needs, especially in areas outside of the large metropolitan cities. This unfortunate picture is likely to persist for many years; for some time to come the overflow of couples seeking therapy will probably be handled by nonprofessional counselors.

Experiments have already been started, especially at the National Institute of Mental Health under the direction of Dr. Margaret Rioch, in the training of lay persons in basic counseling. Dr. Rioch first selected a group of mature women who were eager for pursuits other than keeping house and who had demonstrated some ability in managing their own lives successfully. She found that the group as a whole developed fairly rapidly skills which allowed them to be useful to other people in counseling, without assuming those responsibilities that a psychiatrist would ordinarily shoulder.

Another trend of particular importance is developing in some primary and secondary schools. A child’s performance in school and the state of the parents’ marriage are often intimately related. In some schools, when a child appears to be troubled the counselor attempts to see the parents as well as the child. This is an important trend, and one which may gain momentum-partially because it is relatively easy to detect problems in children in the early grades. Spouses who have been delaying their efforts to improve their marriage may be motivated to do so when they learn that their difficulties are interfering with their child’s school performance. But here again, there is the problem of finding sufficient individuals to fill the jobs as school counselors, and of providing better training centers for them. In particular, they will require training that concentrates on marital problems and not on long-term individual psychotherapy, still the primary focus of training in most centers.

The possibility that television might become a source of help for unhappy couples has been largely unexplored. The success of the Purex Corporation programs for women suggests that even marital problems might be discussed in some detail and intimacy if the programs were scheduled for the evening and a couple could watch them together after the children were in bed. The development of this type of program would be a most valuable project for educational television, especially if the right teachers could be found and the material could be presented in a compelling fashion.

Another method of helping troubled spouses is the formation, possibly under the auspices of an organization such as the YMCA, of groups in which married couples meet together for joint discussions. When four to six couples get together weekly to discuss marital problems, the presence of the group has the effect of containing the individual couples’ quarrels and bitterness. Thus the meeting can be reasonably orderly, and yet a good deal of feeling can still be expressed, providing the leader is experienced. The spouses learn that theirs are not the only hates and hurts, and are often able to say things to each other that they cannot mention in private.

There is an increasing tendency for psychiatrists and psychologists interested in marital problems to conduct sessions of this sort, in which four to six couples meet regularly with a therapist. This can be a relatively economical way of obtaining therapy for the couples, but the successful management of this situation is difficult, and requires considerable experience. So-called leaderless groups have been tried, but to our knowledge have not worked out well. Generally, one couple tends to dominate the rest, and the group breaks up as a result of bickering and boredom.

It is interesting that although we have Alcoholics Anonymous to help unfortunate alcoholics, Gamblers Anonymous to aid those who can’t help throwing away their money and Parents Without Partners to enable divorced individuals to share their difficulties, there is no comparable group for those with marital problems. Apparently a marriage is regarded as almost sacrosanct until it has broken up. A Save Our Marriage Society might not be a bad idea; it could offer spouses in difficulty the opportunity .to attend group meetings, learn how much their problems resemble or differ from those of other people, find out what others have done to solve such problems in the past, and generally benefit from a clearing of the air. One possible shortcoming in such meetings, we would expect, is that much of the discussion would deal with the battle of the sexes. However-and this would be fortunate-it might occur to someone among the participants that the caricature of men by women or of women by men is highly ridiculous. Such an organization could sponsor educational films for engaged couples, and a marital checkup clinic for spouses not yet in serious trouble. Corporations now spend millions of dollars a year on periodic medical examinations to guard the health of their executives. The malignant marriage is probably the most frequent source of executive ill health, and yet little, if anything, is done about it. Unfortunately, one must start by admitting that the problem exists.