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An Attributional Approach to Marital Dysfunction and Therapy

  • Chapter
Social Processes in Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Abstract

Various models of marital distress and marital therapy have been developed in recent years. Among them, techniques derived from social learning and behavioral principles have emerged in a treatment often referred to as behavioral marital therapy, or BMT. A large body of empirical data supports the efficacy of BMT (reviewed in Baucom and Hoffman, 1986; also see Jacobson, 1978, 1984a), making it the most thoroughly researched approach to marital problems. However, while such careful scrutiny has highlighted the strengths of BMT, it has also led to an awareness of the treatment’s limitations and weaknesses. For example, a majority of treated couples benefit from this therapeutic approach, but a recent reanalysis of several BMT outcome studies, utilizing very stringent criteria for improvement, demonstrated that 45% of couples do not improve to a clinically significant degree (Jacobson et al., 1984). Therefore, clinicians and researchers have begun developing new methods to increase the positive impact of BMT for a greater number of couples.

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Authors
  1. Amy Holtzworth-Munroe
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  2. Neil S. Jacobson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, George Mason University, 22030, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    James E. Maddux

  2. Department of Educational Psychology, University of Oklahoma, 73019, Norman, Oklahoma, USA

    Cal D. Stoltenberg

  3. Social Relations Department, Lehigh University, 18015, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

    Robert Rosenwein

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© 1987 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Holtzworth-Munroe, A., Jacobson, N.S. (1987). An Attributional Approach to Marital Dysfunction and Therapy. In: Maddux, J.E., Stoltenberg, C.D., Rosenwein, R. (eds) Social Processes in Clinical and Counseling Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8728-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8728-2_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-8730-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-8728-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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