ABSTRACT
There appears to be a growing acceptance of the need to distinguish between the knowledge required to understand a particular phenomenon or problem, and the knowledge required to try to resolve it. Fischer, for example, distinguishes between ‘causal/developmental knowledge [which] focuses on answering the question “Why did a given state of affairs come about?” ’ and ‘Intervention knowledge…[which] is intended to be used to prescribe principles and procedures for inducing change in behaviours and/or situations’ (1978:52). Thus, although understanding causation may be important in prescribing the areas and goals of intervention, it may do little to identify the actual techniques intervention may require. An explanatory view of the effects of maternal deprivation on the development of the personality, for example, may say nothing about what needs to be done in order to remedy the problems being currently experienced, these tools of intervention forming a distinct and additional body of knowledge with which the practitioner needs to be equipped. Chapter 3 therefore reviewed those explanatory concepts that are useful in understanding marital conflict, whilst this and the following chapter look at those concepts and models of intervention that may answer Fischer’s second question about ‘what can be done’.
