ABSTRACT
In the last several decades, the study of relationships has become a vigorous scholarly discipline in its own right. Within the field of Psychology, this work represents a shift away from the traditional focus on individuals. Instead, students of relationships examine interactions between individuals, and they take dyads-or sometimes larger configurations of persons-as the unit of study. A particular area of interest has been on close relationships-relatively enduring relationships between two or more persons that have especial significance for the individuals involved. Although much of the work on relationships has been done with adult couples, the science of relationships was brought into the mainstream of Developmental Psychology in the 1980s, with the publication of the Hartup-Rubin book on Relationships and Development (1986), and the seminal work of Gerald Patterson and his associates on parent-child interaction in families of aggressive (as compared with nonaggressive) children (Patterson, 1982).
