ABSTRACT
The marital therapist has the choice of using interventions that are affectively, behaviorally, or cognitively oriented. The first two categories of interventions have been widely discussed in the marital therapy literature (1' Abate & McHenry, 1983). The use of cognitive interventions has received little interest in spite of the fact that cognitive approaches have been highly influential in individual psychotherapy. For the most part, cognitive approaches have only been applied to individuals. Most of Albert Ellis's (1962) early work in Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) and Aaron Beck's (1976) early work in Cognitive Therapy (CT) were individually oriented. In 1988, Beck discussed how cognitive therapy might be applied to couples. In 1995, Ellis renamed his approach Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) acknowledging the further role behavioral responses have with individual's interpersonal problems and in family and couple relationships.
