ABSTRACT
In recent years therapeutic encounters between disturbed families and individual therapists or therapeutic teams, consisting of two or more professional helpers, have attracted a great deal of practical and theoretical interest. A never-failing readiness for therapeutic experimentation has lead the professions of social work and psychiatry to shift diagnostic and methodological emphasis from individuals to families. This chapter highlights that the effort to adjust therapy to the needs of both marriage partners in situations of marital disturbances brought about such approaches as collaborative therapy, concurrent psychoanalytic therapy, and conjoint marital therapy. Deficient or excessive satisfaction is likely to interfere with the preparation for the future. Developmental demand is always threatened by arrest: arrest is a frequent reaction to an excessive degree of dissatisfaction or satisfaction that makes maturation a threat rather than a support of positive expectations.
