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The Two Schools of Marital Therapy

There are two main schools of marital therapy, psychotherapy and system-based therapy.

The goal of psychotherapy is to understand the individual deeply.

In psychotherapy, through in-depth study of your family, your feelings, and so on, you learn to understand the forces that shaped you and how they are guiding you now in a way that may be hurtful to you.

Psychotherapy frequently takes a long time, but aims for a clear understanding and sometimes-fundamental change in the way people behave and feel about themselves.

The second approach is couples-based or family-based therapy. It is referred to as system-based therapy. This is because the couple or family is viewed as a "system," where actions of one family member affect others.

In system-based therapy, both members of the couple see the same therapist for joint sessions.

Your early family influences (the "why") may be somewhat less important in this kind of therapy. The issue of the effects you are having on each other (the "what") is generally more important.

System-based therapy often takes a much shorter time than psychotherapy. It aims to get people to find ways to live with one another. It aims to change behaviors, rather than to explore the psyche. But system-based therapy can be enough to completely turn the situation around.

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