Helping Couples Change: A Social Learning Approach to Marital Therapy

by Richard B. Stuart

Now available in paper for the first time, this classic work presents a structured, rigorously tested, six-stage strategy for improving intimate relationships. Therapists and counselors will benefit from practical, step-by-step guidance for deciding how, why, and when to employ such widely cited Stuart techniques as "caring days," communication improvements, behavioral contracting, the "powergram" procedure for decision making, and conflict containment. These techniques not only provide a program for identifying and producing positive behavior change, but give the therapist the tools to assess therapeutic outcome and empirically validate the efficacy of change. A new preface to the paperback edition situates the book within the contemporary couple therapy landscape and reflects on the continuing evolution of the author's approach.

Genres: Relationships

442 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 1980

Reviews

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was probably irresponsible of me to rate this book, considering I didn't actually finish it; however, I tried to compensate by giving it the benefit of the doubt and rating it 2 stars as opposed to 1. I couldn't finish this book because I found it long-winded and inaccessible, with not much emphasis on the practical. Perhaps more importantly, although this edition was published in 2004, it clearly had not been updated since its original 1980 publication -- every single reference was from the '70s or earlier. This served as a complete disincentive to getting through this difficult book, as none of the information was current and I wasn't sure how seriously to take any of it. Maybe one could argue that this text is a classic and should be read as one, or perhaps that things haven't changed that much and the information is still useful. To the first argument, I say that I could probably find equally informative books that may deserve to be classics but contain more current information. To the second, if things in fact haven't changed, I'd like contemporary references which attest to that. And surely SOME things have, at least among the plethora of statistics they cite if nothing else.