ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a more problematized understanding of the notion of 'marital problems'. The analysis of the social construction of divorce rates as a societal issue needs to proceed hand in hand with an analysis of individual understandings of divorce and marital problems. Within the wider context of the social construction of marital problems, it is important to take account of the particular role played by medical influences. The chapter considers two possible constructions of these inter-connections between marital issues and marital agencies: the idea of 'medicarization' and the idea of the 'counselling gaze'. It discusses the possibilities of thinking in terms of a 'marital gaze'. The chapter explores some measure of convergence or overlap between wider processes of medicarization, the overall elaboration of a counselling gaze in a wide variety of organizational and inter-personal settings and the construction and understanding of marriage in broadly relational terms.
