When One Wants Out and the Other Doesn't : Doing Therapy with Polarized Couples

This lively, highly clinical volume describes, via the personal theories, styles, methods, and techniques of 16 well-known and respected marriage and family therapists, how to do therapy With couples in marriages that can be termed "low-grade"-where there is no major pathology but where love has died for at least one partner and the couple is often emotionally, if not legally, divorced. Making use of vivid case examples throughout, this volume provides the reader with answers to such questions as "How do you handle such polarized couples?"; What do you do with them in therapy?"; What is your theoretical framework?; Do you use working hypotheses?"; Do you diagnose in any formal way?"; "How do you avoid being triangulated?"; "Are you strategic, structural, extended, functional, or integrated, eclectic, etc?"; "How do you deal with the likely eventuality wherein one insists on filing for divorce and the other becomes angry and bitter?" The 12 chapters represent a wide range of theory and method. While all of the authors may be classified as "systemic," none has defined him/herself as exclusively strategic, structural, or extended. The reader is likely to identify more readily with some clinicians than with others, although there is much to be learned by a careful perusal of the position of each one. Contributing authors include William C. Nichols, Barbara L. Fisher and Robert W. Calhoun, Anthony P. Jurich, Craig A. Everett and Sandra S. Volgy, Candyce S. Russell and Charles M. Drees, Laura J. Singer-Magdoff, Luciano L'Abate and Doris W. Hewitt, Wayne E. Oates, Marcia Lasswell, Barbara E. James, Michael J. Sporakowski, and Eleanor D. Macklin. In the Afterword, the editor presents a most useful integration and application of the various theoretical and methodological approaches. This highly practical and readable volume will be of great value to all marriage and family therapists in a therapeutic area which has been too long neglected. Book jacket.