Marriage Counselling Intervention - Term Paper Example

Counselling Intervention for Divorce Introduction For many people, religious values are unimportant, and in many of those cases, the people have little interest in whether the counsellor is Christian (Worthington, 1998, 173). For clients who are highly committed to their religious beliefs, however, a counsellor’s explicit Christianity can determine whether the person will even seek counselling intervention. Furthermore, highly religious clients evaluate their counsellor on different value dimensions than do nonreligious clients. Religious clients evaluate their counsellor on (a) the authority he or she affords scripture, (b) the authority he or she affords religious leaders, and (c) the identification of the counsellor with the religious group of reference. All clients can tolerate only limited differences from their own important values. If value differences are too great, clients may terminate counselling intervention. Probably, the client's evaluation of the counsellor on these three religious value dimensions has more effect on choice of counsellor or continuation after an initial interview than it has on the long-term satisfaction of the client after the client has made a considerable investment of time and money in counselling intervention. The Christian approach to marriage counselling intervention that advocated by the counsellors is not merely hearing confession --nor is it preaching or studying the Bible. It is not spiritual direction, which involves guided reflection about Christian living--nor is it spiritual guidance, which involves advice and direct suggestion. It is marriage counselling intervention, as is secular marriage counselling intervention. As such, like any marriage counselling intervention, it involves the assumption that basic counselling skills will be employed consonant with the personality style of the counsellor and the needs of the client. Approach to marriage counselling assumes that counsellors may employ techniques that originated in the Christian traditions when they are consonant with the personality and beliefs of the counsellor and the needs of the client and when they are deemed to contribute to the goals of marital therapy. Generally, the counsellor will not initiate a challenge to the client's Christian beliefs unless such a challenge is otherwise clinically advisable (e.g., obsessive or intrusive thoughts, compulsive religious behaviour, psychotic thinking of religious content, and the like). In all cases, good clinical judgment is presumed--as in any theory. Basic Assumptions and Goals It is to be believed that people are created in the image of God, which endows them with a variety of laudable personal qualities. They were created as individuals, but they were created to be in relationship with God and with humans, most importantly with a spouse, with whom they are "one flesh," but also with their offspring, members of their family of origin, and others both Christian and non-Christian. Despite their positive qualities, people are corrupted by the fall, which acts as a distal cause of psychological and relationship problems and people can be redeemed by admitting their sinfulness and trusting in Jesus as their saviour. Their redemption will often help heal their personal and relationship problems but rarely will it completely cure them or prevent all future problems. A Christian marital therapist has a two-pronged goal: (a) to help people grow spiritually and psychologically through (b) helping they solve their marital problems. Researchers suggested that therapies focus generally on either promoting growth or solving problems. Problems occupy people's attention and thus often hinder their spiritual and psychological growth. Problems often focus attention inward on private pain and suffering and outward on objects of blame to which to attribute the cause of private suffering. Counsellors hope to help troubled Christian couples solve their marital problems while enhancing (or at worst not negatively affecting) their individual spiritual development. Counsellors acknowledge God's ultimate control but believe that God usually works through the responsible effort of marital partners as they attempt to solve their relationship difficulties. The emphasis is definitely on solving problems rather than promoting spiritual growth for most couples (because that is the reason most couples seek marital therapy), but the promotion of spiritual growth acts as an important boundary condition that makes the counselling intervention different from mere secular counselling. Marriage Stability and Quality Lewis and Spanier (1999, Press) have differentiated relationship stability from relationship quality. The divorce rate measures marriage stability and is governed by factors different from those of marriage quality. Marriage stability and marriage quality are related to each other but not perfectly correlated. For example, a marriage may have high stability even though the quality of the relationship is low. On the other hand, a person could be reasonably satisfied with his or her marriage but still divorce (high quality, low stability) because the marriage was perceived to be an impediment to career advancement or to personal satisfaction. Marital stability is affected by a sense of commitment to the relationship. Marital quality is related to intimacy (or distance), communication, conflict resolution, and degree of hurtfulness in the couple's relationship. Marital Commitment Highly committed Christian clients may have a sense of commitment different from that of many others in modern U.S. culture. Certainly, highly religious people have consistently been found to have lower divorce rates than low-committed or nonreligious people have (for a review see Spilka, Hood, & Gorsuch, 2005). In contemporary culture, societal changes during the last hundred years have contributed to a cultural erosion of marital commitment. Except for some brief fluctuations (one of which may be currently operating), divorce has increased exponentially since 1870. Although Christians live in modern culture, their acceptance of a worldview informed by the Old and New Testaments, church traditions, and current ecclesiastical norms creates an understanding of marital commitment different from that of many people who are not committed to Judeo-Christian beliefs. Christianity is built on the notion of covenant. A covenant (or testament) is an agreement between people to seek the welfare of others even at personal cost to self (Bromley & Busching, 1998, 20). In Genesis 15, God made a covenant with Abraham, signifying God's commitment and eternal fidelity to Abraham and his descendants. The Old Testament (or Old Covenant) is the history of God's faithfulness to Israel. Christians believe that through Jesus, God made a new covenant with either Jews or non-Jews who believe in Jesus. Like the old covenant, the new covenant was ratified by the shedding of (Jesus') blood. The metaphor of marriage being like God's relationship with God's own people is carried throughout Old and New Testaments. God is referred to as husband and Israel as wife (Jer. 31:32; Hos. 2:16, 3:1); Jesus is referred to as husband and the church as wife (Eph. 5:25-33); and Jesus is referred to as husband and the believer as wife (1 Cor. 6:16-17). In one sense, God created marriage to help us understand our spiritual relationship with God. In another sense, we learn how to act toward our spouse by experiencing a spiritual relationship with God. Marriage faithfulness and God's faithfulness to us mirror each other. As a reflection of our relationship with God, marriage is expected to be permanent. To assess the couple's communications, the counsellor use their self-reports and direct them to discuss various issues during the session. Communication can be understood on three levels. A counsellor might be concerned with the semantics, or meaning, of communications, in which communication problems are seen as being due to misunderstanding verbal or nonverbal behaviour. A counsellor might also be concerned with the syntax of communications, in which problems are seen as being due to how people communicate. A counsellor might also be concerned with the pragmatics of communications. Such a counsellor will be concerned with the practical effects of the communications, especially on the balance of power between the spouses or within the family. Rather than overt, revealed power--such as who gives directives to whom or who controls resources--the counsellor concerned with the pragmatics of communication wants to discern how decisions are made and who makes them. No marriage counsellor attends only to one level of communications, because all levels are present in most communications. Most counsellors, however, look for problems in communication in one area more than others. Usually counsellor attends more to the pragmatics of communications than to the semantics or syntax of communications. Christian couples are often concerned with the relative power between husband and wife and between parents and children. There are scriptural passages that are variously interpreted to support a hierarchical marriage or an egalitarian marriage. The Christian counsellor will undoubtedly have his or her interpretation of those passages and may find that those views are tested by couples (Noller, 2004, 4). Some couples look at the counsellor’s interpretation of scripture concerning traditional or egalitarian marriage as a litmus test for whether the counsellor can be trusted. Thus, the counsellor must tread carefully around the issues and generally work within the value framework of the clients. For the Christian who understands marriage as a covenant, marriage is a permanent, intimate, love relationship that requires placing the other person's needs above one's own. In that sense, spouses do not deserve happiness; they receive it through grace and mercy. (Grace is receiving good consequences that we do not deserve, and mercy is not receiving bad consequences that we do deserve.) The implication of this understanding of marriage is to increase marital commitment. Rusbult (2003, 105) has proposed a general model of commitment to a relationship in which commitment equals marital satisfaction (relative to the satisfaction one thinks that one deserves) minus satisfaction with alternatives to marriage plus investments in the marriage. Using her investment model of commitment, marriage satisfaction is thought to be increased, because the expectations for marriage are lowered and because a happy marriage is viewed not as a right but as a blessing. The investments in marriage are increased because of the person's belief in the importance of the marriage covenant. Although scripture permits divorce under some circumstances, divorce is understood as grieving God, which decreases a sense of alternatives to marriage. References Rusbult, C. E. (2003). A longitudinal test of the investment model: The development (and -deterioration) of satisfaction and commitment in heterosexual involvement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 101-117. Spilka, B., Hood, R. W., Jr., & Gorsuch, R. L. (2005). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bromley, D. G., & Busching, B.C. (1998). Understanding the structure of contractual and covenantal social relations: Implication for the sociology of religion. Sociological Analysis, 49, 15-32. Lewis, R. A., & Spanier, G. B. (1999). Theorizing about the quality and stability of marriage. In W. R. Burr, R. Hill, F. I. Nye, & I. L. Reiss (Eds.), Contemporary theories about the family (pp. 268-294). Free Press. Noller, P. (2004). Nonverbal communication and marital interaction. Oxford, England: Pergamon, 4-6. Worthington, E. L., Jr. (1998). Understanding the values of religious clients: A model and its application to counselling. Journal of Counselling Psychology, 35, 166-174. Read More