ABSTRACT
Today, many clinicians are increasingly being referred for or called on to deal with critical clinical treatment issues that require a working knowledge of couple and family assessment resources. These referrals may involve various challenges such as suitability for marriage, marital separation, divorce, mediation, family violence, and child custody for which couple and family assessment data and/or methods and strategies would be useful or essential. Unfortunately, graduate education in clinical psychology and counseling primarily trains clinicians to work with individual clients and conceptualize cases in terms of individual personality dynamics rather than in terms of systemic or couple and family dynamics. Accordingly, many have not had formal coursework, training, or supervised experience in couple and family assessment. Even those who have completed degrees in marital and family therapy may not have received much in the way of formal training and supervised experience in formally assessing couples and families. Thus, the discussion in this and subsequent chapters can be helpful in addressing such clinical considerations as marital issues, family violence, or child custody.
