ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines the development of the thinking and practice of the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies as it has developed since its establishment in 1948. The Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies came into being after World War Two as a result of the growing political concern for the state of marriage and the family. When the Family Discussion Bureau was established in 1948 it defined its tasks as threefold. They are: to provide a service for people seeking help with marriage problems; to devise techniques appropriate to such a service, and evolve a method of training caseworkers; and, to find out something about problems of inter-personal relationships as they reveal themselves in marital difficulties. As well as offering a way of thinking about the nature of couple interaction, and how this will be re-enacted in the transference relationship to the psychotherapist, psychoanalytic theory also suggests ways of understanding partner choice.