ABSTRACT
This chapter examines various aspects of marital relationships and underlines that arguments, tension, conflicts, and short periods of unhappiness are part of any marital relationship. It highlights the importance of the life cycle as a context within which to explore marital relationships and understand the couple’s presenting symptoms or difficulties. Marital therapy is making an important contribution to furthering an understanding of marital functions and their vicissitudes and pathological disturbances, and to finding ways of dealing with them in a positive and creative way. Family therapy has had a complex historical development, because the presence of grandparents, uncles, nephews, and nieces, and to some extent the community, creates some uncertainties about boundaries. Marital therapy has developed through a wide range of approaches, but it has been strongly influenced by psychoanalysts and family therapists. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book.
