ABSTRACT
In marital counseling, the approach used by many caseworkers has been to treat the individuals involved in terms of their respective neuroses, with change in the marital relationship coming as a by-product of improved individual adjustment. The individualistic paradigm is one possible way of interpreting the world—one, but not the only one. The world, human “nature,” and interpersonal relationships can also be understood in different ways. In the introduction to their book Pragmatics of Human Communication Watzlawick reports the following story: Among the American soldiers who, during the war, were stationed in England, there was wide-spread opinion that English girls were very easily accessible sexually. Distressed couples exhibit extremely rigid, repetitive patterns of interaction that can be easily identified most of the time. In many cases the following simplification contains a greater or lesser amount of truth: The man needs sex for intimacy, the woman needs intimacy for sex.
