1.  Drs. Jill and David Scharff     "Object-Relations Focused Marital Treatment,"     co-authors of Object Relations Couples Therapy

From the point of view of the Scharffs, a couple is a system of conscious and unconscious intrapsychic object relationships.  All the object relations theorists share the fundamental premise that attachment is the central motivated by the need to be in relationships, and therefore personality forms in a relaional context.  It follows, then, that a couple is not simply a pair of individuals.  According to Drs. Jill and David Scharff, a couple is a system of conscious and unconscious intrapsychic object relationships which are experienced in the interpersonal area.  The Scharffs, married to each other, discuss object relations theory as it applies to couples.

2.  Charles McCormack, MSW     "Borderline Marriages"    (author of Treating Borderline States in Marriage:  Dealing with Ruthless Aggression, Severe Resistance and Oppositionalism.)

Anyone doing marital therapy knows that there are couples, and then there are couples!  The usual, maybe normal, maybe neurotic couple rapidly incorporates the therapist's help with communication and with conflict resolution issues.  On the other hand, the personality-disordered marriage seems impervious to change and in fact, seems to get worse in treatment.  Charles McCormack describes marriage as containing both the dream and the nightmare of the couple's way of being in a relationship.  The couple presents a tangle which all  three in the room must work to sort-out.

From the object relations perspective, the engagement between couple and therapist is the means for understanding the couple.  The therapeutic goal is not insight per se, but the facilitation of new relationships.  Through the relationship with the therapist, the borderline couple is helped to relinquish pathological relational patterns and replace them with others based on the couple's authentic experience.

3.  Michael Rohrbaugh, Ph.D.    "A Systemic Approach to Treating Couples with an Alcoholic Spouse"

Here we move to the systems perspective, looking at a new way of understanding couples in which one of them is an alcoholic.

From a systems perspective, alcohol problems are interwoven with the family and social context in which they occur.  Research has shown that working with the drinker's marriage and family relationships yields more durable treatment outcomes.  Dr. Michael Rorhaugh an dhis colleagues have developed a treatment protocol in which alcohol is viewed as the invader.  The couple is helped to band together to fight the invader.  He tells us about this protocol in this interview.

4.  Marlene Watson, Ph.D.      "Work with Difficult Couples"

Dr. Marlene Watson addresses breaking the destructive patterns that often exist in couples' relationships.  She discusses marital therapy with hard to treat couples, how to break destructive patternsn, how to view the relationship as a system, and how to deal with extramarital affairs.  Plus she helps us understand the chronically stuck couple by looking at the meaning and purpose of conflict in a couples relationship and how to work creatively toward resolution.

5.  Frank Pittman, M.D.      "Infidelity"   (author of Private Lies)

Most therapists view affairs as expressive of troubled relationships. Quite to the contrary, Dr. Frank Pittman views affairs as indications of a character flaw in the person to whom he refers as the "infidel."  He will discuss four patterns of infidelity, each of which must be approached differently.  And he has strong words of admonition for therapists about secrecy and honesty, how to limit the damage affairs do, and how to heal a relationship that has been hurt by infidelity.