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THE GUILFORD PRESS
DOING COUPLE THERAPY
Also by Robert Taibbi
Doing Family Therapy, Third Edition:

Craft and Creativity in Clinical Practice
Doing Couple Therapy
Craft and Creativity in Work
with Intimate Partners
SECOND EDITION
ROBERT TAIBBI
The Guilford Press

New York London
Copyright © 2017 The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
370 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1200, New York, NY 10001
www.guilford.com
All rights reserved
Except as noted, no part of this book may be reproduced,

translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
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Printed in the United States of America
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Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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mation that is complete and generally in accord with the standards of practice that are
accepted at the time of publication. However, in view of the possibility of human error
or changes in behavioral, mental health, or medical sciences, neither the author, nor the
editors and publisher, nor any other party who has been involved in the preparation or
publication of this work warrants that the information contained herein is in every respect
accurate or complete, and they are not responsible for any errors or omissions or the
results obtained from the use of such information. Readers are encouraged to confirm the
information contained in this book with other sources.
LIMITED DUPLICATION LICENSE

These materials are intended for use only by qualified professionals.
The publisher grants to individual purchasers of this book nonassignable permission
to reproduce all materials for which permission is specifically granted in a footnote.
This license is limited to you, the individual purchaser, for personal use or use with
your clients. This license does not grant the right to reproduce these materials for
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Taibbi, Robert, author.
Title: Doing couple therapy : craft and creativity in work with intimate
partners / Robert Taibbi.
Description: Second edition. | New York : The Guilford Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017012002| ISBN 9781462530137 (paperback) | ISBN
9781462530144 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Couples therapy. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy /
Couples & Family. | MEDICAL / Psychiatry / General. | SOCIAL SCIENCE /
Social Work. | RELIGION / Counseling.
Classification: LCC RC488.5 .T327 2017 | DDC 616.89/1562—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012002
About the Author
Robert Taibbi, LCSW, has over 40 years’ experience as a clinician,

supervisor, and clinical director, primarily in community mental health
working with children, couples, and families. He is the author of over
300 articles and six books, including Doing Family Therapy, Third Edi-
tion: Craft and Creativity in Clinical Practice; Clinical Social Work Supervi-
sion: Practice and Process; Boot Camp Therapy: Brief, Action-Oriented Clinical
Approaches to Anxiety, Anger, and Depression; and The Art of the First Ses-
sion: Making Psychotherapy Count from the Start. In addition, he writes the
online column “Fixing Families” for Psychology Today, has served as an
advice columnist for several magazines, and has received three national
writing awards for consumer health writing. Mr. Taibbi provides train-
ing both nationally and internationally in couple therapy, family ther-
apy, brief therapy, and clinical supervision, and has served as adjunct
professor at several universities. He is currently in private practice in
Charlottesville, Virginia.
v
Preface
T here’s the well-known metaphor about writers thinking of

their books as their intellectual children—formed and nurtured with
considerable care and effort, and then launched, with some trepidation,
out into the big world, their ultimate fate unknown. Writing this edition
and this preface is like taking a snapshot of one such child, where the
contrast between the past and present suddenly come into bold relief—
you’re surprised by how much her legs have lengthened, how his arms
have become muscled—a summary of the minute changes accumulated
over time that are impossible to notice in the close-up of everyday life.
But this child is not conceived by me alone. It is the product of
another relationship: the relationship between me and my work. It is no
surprise that I talk a good deal in a book on couple therapy about the
need for couples to be in lockstep, to work together as a team, and to
appraise their relationship periodically. The same is true, I believe, of
the relationship between the clinician and his or her work. That is what
writing this edition has enabled me to do.
What I have discovered in the process, and what you will see within
these pages, is an update of my own relationship with my clinical self.
What has emerged is a clearer formulation of the three obstacles that
can handicap any intimate relationship, especially a more detailed
explanation of emotional wounds and their impact on the dynamics
of the relationship. The writing also reflects my interest over the past
years in brief therapy work, and with that a more detailed focus on the
process of those all-important opening sessions. You’ll find the language
a bit more crisp, the content a bit more action oriented.
My other relationship update is with you, the reader. Through the
supervision and training that I do, I am continuously made aware of the
desire and need for clinicians to know more about what to do specifi-
vii
viii Preface
cally within sessions, rather than accumulating a new pile of concepts.

I’ve tried to address this by including chapters on treatment maps. As
the name implies, these are not step-by-step guides, but are rather like
road maps that indicate what direction to take, optional routes to con-
sider along the way, and potential obstacles you may want to avoid. I
hope having these maps in mind before you meet the couple and their
problems gives you a mental head start in navigating the terrain ahead.
What hasn’t changed is my commitment to the notion that therapy
is at least as much an art and craft as it is the simple application of con-
cepts and skills, and that the best therapy is that which combines your
own clinical models and fully utilizes your own unique personality and
talents. The book is less a manual on how to do couple therapy than it
is an invitation and challenge to you to define how you do (or may want
to do) this work, in your own unique and creative way.
My hope is that you too will develop a close relationship with your
work and will take the time and make an effort to see that it fully rep-
resents who you are. I hope this book encourages you to discover what
you do best.
Contents
Chapter 1. Into the Fray: Theoretical Foundation 1

and Overview
Chapter 2. The Basics: Clinical Goals and Tasks 15
Chapter 3. Relationship Obstacle 1: 41

Poor Communication Skills
Chapter 4. Relationship Obstacles 2 and 3: 58

Emotional Wounds and Differing Visions
Chapter 5. Beginnings: Structure and Tasks 75
Chapter 6. Beginnings in Action 96
Chapter 7. Middle Stages 118
Chapter 8. Termination 139
Chapter 9. The Developmental Landscape 155
Chapter 10. Treatment Maps for Common 176

Couple Problems: Affairs, Money Issues,
and Violent or Volatile Couples
ix
x Contents

Couple Problems: Sexual Issues, “Stale”
Relationships, and Extended Family Issues

Child-Related Problems
Chapter 13. One Helping Two, Two Helping One: 244

Working with Individuals in Relationships
Chapter 14. Life in the Details: The Nuts and Bolts 256
of Couple Therapy
Appendix A. Explanation of Emotional Wounds 271
Appendix B. Instructions for a First-Aid Plan 274

for Violent Couples
Appendix C. Instructions for Meditation 275
Appendix D. Instructions for the Emotional 276

Freedom Technique
Appendix E. Instructions for Using Mindfulness 278

to Reduce Anxiety
References 279
Index 281
Purchasers of this book can download and print

enlarged versions of the Appendices
at www.guilford.com/taibbi2-forms
for personal use or use with clients
(see copyright page for details).
DOING COUPLE THERAPY
Chapter 1
Into the Fray

Theoretical Foundation and Overview
E llen sits at the edge of her seat, her arms folded across her
chest, her coat bunched up against her, and looks directly at you. Her
husband, Tom, sits diagonally across from you and her, looking at the
floor.
You take a deep breath. “I want to thank you both for coming in,”
you say, glancing at each of them. “I know, Ellen, that we talked briefly
on the phone on Monday, but didn’t have time to go into details. The
only thing I know is that the two of you have been separated about a
week.”
“He left! Up and walked out.” Ellen’s eyes are now bulging, her face
is getting red, yet you notice tears in the corner of her eyes. “Out of the
blue.” She pulls her arms closer to chest.
“It sounds like this was a shock to you,” you say in calm voice. Ellen
nods.
Tom is still looking at the floor. “How do you feel about being here,
Tom?” You want to connect with him before this goes any further.
“It’s pretty strange.” He looks up at you. His voice is quiet, his tone
is restrained, maybe depressed.
“Yes, I bet it is. How long have you been married?” Again, you try
to keep your voice calm—calmness is one of the best antidotes to the
anxiety that clients bring to therapy.
“Twelve years,” says Tom. He’s back to looking at the floor.
“Do you have any kids?” you ask, looking between them.
“Two beautiful children,” says Ellen, punching out the words. “I
just don’t understand why he is doing this.” Her face is getting red again,
she’s tearing up. “I don’t understand. How could he do this?” she asks,
1
2 DOING COUPLE THERAPY
her voice getting louder. “How can you walk away from your wife and
kids just like that, after 12 years!”
Tom grips the chair tighter and sighs.
Ask any sailor what it takes to navigate a voyage, and he will tell you
that you need to have basic sailing skills, know your boat and the waters,
be able to read the wind and the weather, and trust your instincts.
Whether it’s making the subtle adjustments that keep you on course, or
knowing when it’s time to lower your sails and stay put, it’s the ability
to bring together all this knowledge that determines success.
Couple therapy is much the same. In order to help Tom and Ellen
have a different type of conversation, you need confidence in yourself
and your clinical skills. While you need to rely on a theoretical foun-
dation, you also need to understand and manage the specific forces
that shape each therapy and journey—the gale of the current crisis, the
undertow of the past, the moment-to-moment changes in the emotional
climate, or the normal life cycle stresses that can suddenly blow a couple
off course. You need to be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of
danger and anticipate the challenges in order to make the corrections
that will help bring the couple back on track.
A DIFFERENT THERAPY
This is what this book is about—learning to navigate the challenges that

make up what we call couple therapy. It’s a different world and skill set
from, say, individual or family therapy. Individual therapy is a smaller
world—just you and the client. Your focus can be simple and direct. The
process seems easier to control. There is one voice to listen to, one side
to take. If the client is motivated—“I need help with this problem, this
worry, this issue, these emotions”—and even when he is not (“The judge
ordered me to come; I don’t know why”), it doesn’t take much effort
to determine who has and what is the problem. At its best, individual
therapy is like a heartfelt conversation at a coffee shop with someone
you know well, one that often goes deeper than ordinary life, which
makes the therapy experience profound and rewarding.
Family therapy, in contrast, is that larger world where intimacy,
if not lost, at best comes in spurts. Here there are many stories, many
points of view, who and what is the problem shift as the conversation
moves around the room, and for less experienced clinicians the sheer
weight of information can seem overwhelming. But family therapy, once
it starts to progress, has its own momentum. Someone in the room,
much like the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes, is likely to call some-
Theoretical Foundation and Overview 3
one out, to put on the table the real agenda that lies under the Tuesday
versus Wednesday argument that everyone else is talking about; there’s
often a core of common concern about a child even if the parents dis-
agree on the means or even the ends. Rather than being the patient lis-
tener, the gentle interpreter, your role is often more like that of a traffic
cop—stopping one so another can move forward, making sure someone
doesn’t get left out or ganged up on, keeping the flow going when it’s in
danger of getting stalled.
Couple therapy can certainly have moments of intimacy like indi-
vidual therapy and clearly has more of the multiple layers and occa-
sional traffic-cop approach of family work. But it’s often analogous to a
two-ring circus, with each of the partners doing his or her own act for
the therapist, or perhaps more accurately, like a courtroom, with each
trying to persuade you that his reality, not the other guy’s, is right. And
so they stack up facts, and as emotions rise, so does their stack, with
both partners pulling up more examples (“What about that time last
Christmas when you . . . ”) or offstage collaborators (“My mother said
the same thing just yesterday that you . . . ”). Their hope, of course, is
that you sift through all this information and angst and judge who is at
fault, who is the innocent victim.
And even if they both are passionate about their case, they likely
differ in their motivations and goals. While one, like Ellen, is enthusi-
astically motivated for therapy and saving the relationship, the other,
like Tom, is likely to be as enthusiastically unmotivated or at best
ambivalent, what William Doherty (2015) calls one “leaning in,” the
other “leaning out.” Ellen wants Tom to change, but Tom wants Ellen
to change first, or he doesn’t feel he needs to change at all since he’s not
the one with the problem. Your job is to listen to each partner, but to
also step back and look at the interaction between them, to understand
them as individuals, but to understand even more their relationship to
each other. Rather than relaxing into the conversation as you may do in
individual therapy, you’re more likely to always be a bit on edge, always
looking out of the corner of your eye to see what happens next. You’re
always engaged in a balancing act.
And this balancing act is what perhaps makes couple therapy most
different from individual and family therapy. If you’ve ever gone out
together with two other friends, you know how awkward a threesome
can be. In contrast to a dyad or a large group, a threesome often feels
cumbersome and messy. There’s always the danger of someone feeling
left out, someone dominating the other two, two dominating one, some-
one not getting enough attention or too much.
In the therapy session you’re faced with similar juggling—not let-
ting Ellen get too far into a rant or into her despair and pushing Tom
onto the emotional sidelines; not spending too much time with Tom
and having Ellen feeling excluded and resentful; not taking over the
conversation yourself and shutting them both down, or causing them
to join forces and gang up against you. To manage the session well you
need to lead and listen, and provide the emotional ballast that allows
them to feel a little safer to talk about things that matter to them. By
the time they walk out of your office both need to know that their
sides have been heard and that their emotions have been respected and
understood. Successfully establishing and maintaining the therapeutic
alliance within this tricky threesome becomes critical.
And should the emotional intensity and stakes seem high, this all
becomes more difficult. When a couple like Tom and Ellen break into
a full-tilt argument as soon as they sit down, or a couple announces
that coming to see you is their “last chance” (usually they mean this
one session) to make it work, even the most seasoned clinician can feel
intimidated. And if you happen to be less clinically experienced, are
uncoupled yourself (“Are you married?” they ask), are having trouble in
your own relationship, or are much younger than your clients (so that it
feels like you are looking in on the secret dark side of your parents’ mar-
riage), it can feel emotionally overwhelming. Your own countertransfer-
ence, always sitting right there, gets stirred.
If all this isn’t enough to make you think twice about taking this on,
there is one additional challenge to face, namely, not just simply putting
out the emotional fire or referee the fight of the week, but help the couple
transform both their relationship and their individual ways of being the
relationship. While they’re busy lining up their facts to make their cases,
you’re curious about what they do that creates the argument at all and
what needs to change so that they have fewer arguments in the future.
Ideally, you want to offer them a vision of a different type of relationship,
one that is more honest, more intimate, and more organic. You want to
help them see and move toward the wider possibility of being more of
who they are as individuals, not less, by the combining of their lives; to
help them realize that by the intermingling of their lives, they can help
each other discover who they are as individuals and as a couple.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION: THEORY
Couple therapy has historically been a stepchild of sorts in the therapy

field, in which individual and family therapy models have been adapted
and applied to it. Traditionally couples relied on their doctors or their
ministers to help them with their relationships. The first professional
marriage counseling center wasn’t established until 1930, and for the
next several decades couple work was incorporated into psychoanalytic

models. In the late 1950s early family therapists began writing about
marital therapy from a communications framework. Over the last 10
to 15 years therapists/researchers such as John Gottman (2007), the
developer of the marriage laboratory, and Susan Johnson (2004), the
codeveloper of emotionally focused couple therapy, Harville Hendrix
(2007), the creator of imago therapy, have looked more closely at the
unique dynamics of happy, as well as unhappy couples, applying what
they’ve discovered to the shaping the therapy process.
The model that we will be using is an integrative one drawn from
five major perspectives. At its heart we will look at couple therapy from
a family systems perspective, with its notion that problems arise from
the interaction between the partners, rather than just from within the
individuals themselves, and are held in place by the behavioral patterns
that they jointly create. This perspective assumes that the patterns are
often more powerful than personalities, and that by interrupting dys-
functional patterns, and helping the couple recognize them, more func-
tional communication and behavior replace what is simply not working.
A subset of such systems thinking is Murray Bowen’s useful notion
of differentiation—moving away from the reactivity and blame of undif-
ferentiated relationships and toward the increased individual responsi-
bility and proactivity of differentiated relationships (Bowen, 1993).
The aim is to help both partners put their heads down and worry
less about what the other is or is not doing and instead focus on their
own openness and honesty. If they can do this, not only are the dys-
functional patterns broken, but interactions become less defensive,
more genuine.
Our model is also behavioral and action-oriented. In contrast to the
insight-oriented approaches of the psychodynamic tradition, couples are
encouraged to change their relationships by doing something different—
in their communication and in their physical behavior at home and in
the session. There are a couple of reasons for taking this stance. One
is that behavior, unlike emotions and even thoughts, is the one aspect
of ourselves that we can truly control. If you continue doing what you
are doing, you will likely continue feeling the same way; change what
you do—break old dysfunctional patterns, create new ones—and your
emotions will change as well. In line with such thinking is the role of
education and development of new skills. This is what Gottman does by
spending time in sessions teaching couples how to communicate more
effectively and encouraging them to change their behavioral patterns at
home.
But the other reason for this behavioral approach is that it bet-
ter fits what clients are expecting and willing to do. Statistics tell us
that most clients simply do not engage in long-term therapy, with most
coming just once (Phillips, 1985) and the average treatment lasting five
to eight sessions (Cooper, 2011). In an age of immediacy and limited
services due to inadequate insurance or community resources, many
clients are looking for rapid assessment and change. The active focus
of a behavioral approach is more time efficient than an insight-oriented
approach and meets most clients’ expectations of therapy.
But as Susan Johnson has pointed out in her research on couple
therapy, new behaviors and skills can often only go so far. Therapy also
needs to be experiential. In order to truly propel couples out of the dys-
functional patterns and help them solidify behavioral change, they need
to have a new emotional experience. This experience happens in the
room through the clinical process. As we will be discussing throughout,
one of the jobs of the therapist is to stop the dysfunctional patterns and
change behaviors, but another crucial one is to change the emotional
climate—by asking the difficult questions, moving the couple into areas
that, because of their own anxiety, they stay away from. This requires
courage on your part, a sensitive but unflinching willingness to bring
underlying problems and emotions into the open.
While our model is primarily present- and action-oriented and
experientially focused, it does acknowledge the power of the past, spe-
cifically reactivation of old childhood wounds in the present. These are
what often create the sticking points in the change process, instances
where couples, in spite of your efforts to push them out of their behav-
ioral ruts, continue to fall back. Rather than approaching history as
a psychodynamically based therapist might, by developing insight and
making this work the focus of the treatment, our approach is more prag-
matic—breaking through behavioral impasses by seeing them as signals
that it is time to dig deeper and unearth the childhood wounds that
may be holding the behaviors in place.
Again we’re not looking at the excavation project that a psycho-
dynamic therapist might. We dig down only enough to help the indi-
viduals step back and separate the past from the present and then ask
for and behaviorally receive now what they could not before. By giving
each other what each most needs, the partners stop the rewounding
process, help each other heal, and move the relationship onto a new and
healthier path.
Finally, overarching these clinical perspectives is a developmental
one. As couples, we are shaped not only by our individual pasts and
current interactions, but also by the personal challenges of adjusting
to the life cycle, as well as the challenges of adjusting to the family life
cycle. New parents, for example, need to navigate the shift from focus-
ing on themselves as a couple to absorbing the roles and responsibilities
of child-rearing, just as many older, empty-nest couples are forced in

the opposite direction, that of making the transition from being largely
preoccupied as parents to once again rediscovering and refocusing on
themselves as a couple. If you can anticipate the challenges and recog-
nize the common problems of each stage, you can help the couple do
the same: understand better the terrain around and before them, see
the larger context, be less reactive and blaming, and more proactive and
self-responsible.
This eclectic mix forms our theoretical foundation, which in turn
forms the basis for assessment and treatment goals—looking for dys-
functional patterns and ways to stop and change them; assessing com-
munication skills and teaching ways of making them more effective;
closely tracking the process and shaping it in order to draw out new
emotions and challenge old perspectives; uncovering old wounds that
stop progress and signal a need for healing, and placing all these ele-
ments within a developmental context. We can think of couple therapy
as moving through layers—from the presenting problem to the underly-
ing issues, from the surface emotions to those that lie below, from the
present to the past and back again. This is an active form of therapy
built upon clarity, action, and responsibility.
THE GOALS OF THIS BOOK
Doing couple therapy is not for the timid, the quiet listener, the head-
nodding, but-how-do-you-feel clinician. Couples who come in emotion-
ally burned-out or mired in ambivalence need your energy and direction
to get them out of their sluggishness; without them you all will end up
psychologically napping. Couples who come in in crisis, who are angry,
or who have strong personalities need you to be the powerful counter-
force. If you aren’t, the couple will wind up doing exactly what they do
at home and leave feeling angry, frustrated, or lonely. They will quite
rightfully think that they could have stayed home and done the same
thing for free.
So you need to step up and be the leader the couple expects you
to be. You’re the one sailing the ship that is couple therapy, and if you
fail to take the helm, therapy will quickly go adrift. One of the goals
of this book is to help you know how to navigate a course through this
therapy’s often choppy waters. We’ll discuss the basic skills you need to
steer the session process and stay balanced, help you recognize the signs
and symptoms of upcoming emotional turmoil and power struggles, and
explore the developmental currents that can push even the most stable
relationships off course.
But this is just part of the picture. Good therapy is also creative
and flexible, a pragmatic journey where one-size-doesn’t-fit-all, and
recognizes that with any one couple there are many forks along the
therapeutic road. Successful couple therapy is that which best fits the
expectations, needs, and personalities of the couple. But it needs to fit
you as well. The biggest variable determining therapeutic success is, in
fact, you: you working at your best, defining and following an approach
that fits your personality and therapeutic philosophy, using yourself cre-
atively, energetically, and honestly so that your clients can learn to do
the same.
This is the other goal of this book—to stimulate your thinking
about what you do and how you work best; to make you curious not
only about the dynamics of the couple, but also about yourself, and you
as part of those dynamics. The model that we will discuss can provide
a foundation upon which to build, but it hopefully will also serve as a
template against which you can compare your own thinking. The ques-
tions and exercises at the end of each chapter offer you an opportunity
to reflect on your own values and theories and the influence of your own
past and discover how they all entwine into a therapeutic process that
is uniquely your own.
As Buckminster Fuller, the visionary architect, once asked, “What
is it that you need to do that no one else can do because of who you are?”
This question is probably one of the most important ones you can ask
yourself as you begin and evolve into your work. It is an excellent start-
ing point for building a therapeutic style, as well as for helping couples
define who they are as individuals and as a couple. Long-term success in
therapy and in relationships is not necessarily about the ability to hold
tight to one path, but rather the courage and flexibility to shift gears and
explore others that can take you where you want and need to go.
STARTING POINTS
All this brings us to a set of clinical assumptions that will serve as a

starting point for our voyage together. As you read through this list,
compare and contrast these concepts against your own. See if you can
begin to identify your own core beliefs.
The Power Is in the Process

Harville Hendrix (2007) once said that most marriages are doomed
to fail in the way most of us think about them. At the start of our
own relationships, we tend to create a vision that is based on outcome
goals—we want to have that three-bedroom house with the white picket
fence, we’ll have 2.3 kids, we’ll have sex twice a week, and we’ll visit
my mother on Sundays. But in the real world, while we may strive to
successfully reach our goals, the outcomes are never guaranteed. The
house, for example, may be suddenly and unexpectedly destroyed in a
hurricane; we find out we are infertile and can’t have our own kids; one
of us is in a car accident and becomes a quadriplegic; my mother remar-
ries and moves to Florida. We have no absolute control over the product
of our labors; the content of our lives is ever-changing.
What we can control, however, and set successful goals about, says
Hendrix, is the process—what we do when the house is lost, how we
talk about the changes we face, how we respond when we are sexually
frustrated, how we support each other when we face a loss. If we have
the means to listen, support, discuss, and decide, we can successfully
negotiate the challenges that life brings to our relationship. This, after
all, is where life lives. Here in the moment, here in our response.
This content versus process split slams at you at the beginning of
therapy because you and the couple are essentially speaking two dif-
ferent languages. As mentioned, most couples are focused on the lan-
guage of content, arguing over whether the bill was paid on Tuesday or
Wednesday, who said what when. They falsely believe that settling dif-
ferences means somehow determining whose story is true. If you wade
into those waters and see your job as sorting through all the informa-
tion, or falsely believe you can control what happens outside your office,
you are likely to mentally and emotionally drown.
Instead you want to focus on the process. You are curious about
and want to focus on why they are sitting on your couch at all: What
prevents them from solving these problems on their own? This is about
helping them recognize that the problem they were talking about right
now in your office has gone out the window and is replaced by the fire
of emotions, that the conversation is turning into a power struggle and
ultimately getting nowhere, and that heaping on content only fuels the
fire more. They need to calm themselves to bring their shut-down pre-
frontal lobes back online, and change what they do in the present so
both can feel safe rather than angry and defensive. If they can master
this, and learn to see the dysfunctional patterns that you see as they
arise, they can learn to transform their relationship. This is a difficult
shift for couples, and even some clinicians, to make, but a necessary one.
But as we’ll talk about more fully in subsequent chapters, what
you see played out in your office is often just a concentrated form of a
dynamic that the individual partners play out in other relationships in
their lives. Here we are talking about stuck points: Where do they each
get stuck in running their lives? Why can they typically act reasonably
and focused in their workaday lives, but fill their intimate relationships
with drama and piles of unsolved problems? Here we think of explosive
anger, emotional cutoffs, feeling intimidated, withdrawing, getting anx-
ious, walking on eggshells, and automatically accommodating others, all
of which are generally tied to childhood wounds and childhood ways of
coping that no longer fit the larger world. If you can determine where
each partner gets stuck, uncover what they can’t do, and help them to
do it through skill building and support, the path to their successfully
navigating their relationships and solving future problems is cleared,
and much of the work of therapy is completed.
The Solutions Are in the Holes

You probably have met parents who feel frustrated with their children
when their ways of parenting seem to no longer work. The father, for
example, who picked up his 7-year-old and plopped him in his room
when his child began to melt down, suddenly finds himself hamstrung
when the same child 9 years later is 6 feet, 2 inches and weighs 180
pounds and refuses to go anywhere. Similarly, the couple is handicapped
when one spouse only deals with conflict by withdrawing or giving in
or the other masks his hurt by getting enraged. Their coping styles, like
the skills of the father, lack the flexibility that life and relationships
often demand.
To say that the solutions are in the holes is to say that creating that
flexibility usually comes by taking the risk of going where you are not
inclined to go—outside your comfort zone, against your grain, doing
what is different and feels difficult. It is here that untapped parts of
oneself are found, and where the solutions lie. Only by learning to take
such risks can couples become more emotionally and psychologically
able to weather the stresses and strains of life. Only by tolerating the
discomfort and anxiety of behaving in new ways can they change their
mindsets and their perspectives and truly have choices in how they act.
Your job is to help the couple move in this direction. You start by
surveying the emotional and verbal landscape, looking for what is not in
the room—topics never talked about, emotions not expressed, or sides
of personalities never shown. You raise the subjects, you draw out the
emotions, and with your encouragement and support, encourage them
to become more curious than afraid. By your own role modeling you
show them that the new and unknown has something valuable to offer.
Problems Are Bad Solutions

It’s a well-used image of the self, the endlessly layered onion, where an
aspect of our emotional and cognitive selves is always below the sur-
face, out of awareness or reach. The notion that problems are bad solu-
tions transfers this image to relationships where what we often see as

a problem in others is really for them just a bad solution to something
else below. The most obvious example, perhaps, is addiction, where the
dependence on alcohol, work, or sex is a bad solution to feelings of
depression, impotence, or rage. But it’s also true for affairs or violence
or passivity—ways of coping with underlying emotions too difficult to
tackle directly. When a couple presents the problem that is driving
them crazy (Maria’s nagging, Luis’s criticism and control), the next
question you want to ask yourself is: How is this a bad solution to an
underlying problem? What is the problem under the problem? Here you
turn their attention to the unacknowledged emotional problem—their
underlying anxiety, fear, hurt—that is the real concern. This doesn’t
mean you don’t help them change their behavior—you do—but you also
help them realize that what seems simple or uncaring is really more
complex.
A corollary of this perspective is that people are usually doing the
best they can. Yes, there are evil people in the world, but by and large,
we assume that people are not by nature malicious. When someone
seems to be manipulative or critical, she is not struggling with you, you
say to yourself, but more with herself. If you can adopt this point of
view as a therapist—and help couples to do the same—you and they are
likely to be more compassionate than defensive. You and they can set
boundaries without engaging in power struggles.
People Naturally Grow and Change

“We must give up the life we planned,” said Joseph Campbell, the world-
famous mythologist, “so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Rather
than building a life, we discover it. Rather than the hold-steady march
to outcomes, life is a gentler unfolding of growth and change. The chal-
lenge that every couple faces is that of remaining open to both indi-
vidual and relationship change, and successfully adjusting the relation-
ship to accommodate it. Your job, as a clinician and outsider, is to get
the subject of change on the table. You not only want to help couples
articulate the changes they see within themselves and within their rela-
tionships, but help them see these changes as an opportunity for growth
rather than as a threat.
At a base level the real underlying issue for many couples coming
to therapy is some form of individuation. Sue has bitten her tongue and
accommodated her husband for many years but is fed up and wants her
ideas acknowledged. Ryan resents being back-burnered to the children,
or, like his father, resents all he has told himself that he “should” do.
Rather than being clear and bold, they’ve mumbled, given in or gone
along, only to have their resentment leak out later in less functional
ways. Or they have tried to stand up for themselves but found that their
assertiveness goes nowhere. They show up because in many ways the
routines and rules established over the years for each no longer fit.
Relationships get stuck because the people do. The good relation-
ship is one in which both people can be who they are, can speak up
honestly and clearly when their individual needs change, and can feel
that the other person has their back—supporting their dreams, accept-
ing their idiosyncrasies; both individuals are committed to their growth
as individuals and as a couple. When they don’t, when they give up
important parts of either person for the relationship, or give up impor-
tant parts of the relationship for either one, the relationship becomes
strewn with too many the emotional potholes that both will invariably
fall into. Part of their struggle, of course, and your challenge, is helping
them decide which of those parts are most important and helping them
define their own priorities and needs.
Advocate for the Relationship

Our cultural values shape what we do, and they, like our relationships
themselves, change over time. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, for
example, divorce reached an all-time high. The needs of the individual
were seen as more important than the relationship: If you could be all
you could be and be in the relationship, fine; if not, move on. Now the
tides have shifted, divorce rates have steadied, and there is talk about
the marriage preservation movement and making the relationship the
priority. You don’t need to go with the flow, nor be rigid, but instead be
clear in your own mind and with the couple about your and their values
in order to help them to do the same.
Here is a shorthand way of looking at various types of relationships.
½+½=1
1 + ½ = 1½
1+1=1+1
1+1=1+1+1
What does this shorthand mean? In the first line ½ + ½ refers to

two people who may be deficient in various ways but lean on each oth-
er’s strengths. Together, by working together and complementing each
other’s weaknesses, they become a stronger unit and are able to create a
stable life. Next, 1 + ½ refers to couples in which one person is psycho-
logically stronger, the other less so, and in their coming together reflect
the unbalanced combination of the two. The concern here is that the
strong one gets tired of carrying the load; she may collapse or eventually
leave. The third sum, 1 + 1, refers to two people with similar psycho-
logical strengths who come together and essentially stay the same, that
is, two people living together who remain individually strong but share
little within the relationship. They often have parallel lives and build
their relationship around kids. There is little conflict but little intimacy.
Finally, the last sum refers to two people who are balanced and individ-
ually strong but have also created something else: the two have become
three, and the third is the relationship. Like a baby, the relationship is
what they both take responsibility for sharing and nurturing.
One way of looking at couple therapy, in contrast, for example, to
individual therapy, is this last formula—the third client always in the
room is the relationship itself. You become an advocate in the way that
you might advocate for a child in family therapy. Like a child, the rela-
tionship is an offspring of both of them. Your job is to help them appre-
ciate the relationship’s needs and personality, realize their responsibility
to nurture it, give it voice when one or both of the partners are blinded
in the moment by their individual needs. Whether or not they decide
to stay together, by understanding how the relationship has unfolded
through their mutual contributions, they are able to have a more bal-
anced view of the relationship process.
We’ll be returning to these principles and assumptions throughout
our voyage together. Again, compare and contrast these principles with
your own. By being clear you have a foundation that you can return to,
a sense of direction that keeps you moving forward rather than getting
lost in the maelstrom of the couple’s dynamics.
CHARTING THE COURSE
This book is divided into four sections. In the first section (Chapters
2–4) we look at the foundational structure of couple therapy, the basic
skills and concepts that you need to successfully navigate doing couple
therapy. In Chapter 2 we map out the core concepts that form your
assessment and treatment planning, including the three primary obsta-
cles to relationships: communication, emotional wounds, and vision. In
Chapters 3 and 4 we further delineate these obstacles and talk about
their implications for treatment.
In our second section, Chapters 5–8, we’ll walk through the actual
navigating of the opening sessions, looking at goals, conducting the ses-
sion process of those first critical sessions, and looking at middle and
end stages and their challenges. In Chapter 9 we’ll look at the ways
developmental changes shape the therapy landscape. In Chapters 10,
11, and 12, our third section, we present treatment maps for common
couple and then child-related presenting problems. While the map is not
the terrain, by knowing how to think about and approach common pre-
senting problems, you can hit the ground running and make the most
of your therapy sessions.
Finally, in our last section we’ll shift gears. In Chapter 13 we look at
working with individuals in couple therapy from two different perspec-
tives—that of helping one partner become a change agent for the couple
system and helping two partners support the one who is struggling. In
Chapter 14, our final chapter, we’ll step back and look at the broader
landscape of doing the work of therapy and discuss common counter-
transference issues and tips on managing your practice, as well as how
to market yourself.
At the end of each chapter are questions and exercises relevant to
that chapter. They are ways of helping you connect to the material per-
sonally—by considering your own history and experience, your own val-
ues, your ways of approaching problems, your own vulnerabilities and
strengths. Please try them, especially those that seem more difficult, to
see what you may discover about yourself and to become more aware of
how your personal self shapes your professional work.
LOOKING WITHIN: CHAPTER 1 EXERCISES
1. Write out your own theoretical orientation regarding couple therapy.

What do you change in couple therapy? How, specifically, do you
bring about change? What is your role? How is it in line with or dif-
ferent from other therapeutic work that you do?
2. What are your own assumptions about clinical work? What personal
values influence your work?
3. Think back to times that you have been involved in a three-person
triangle. What role do you tend to take—leader, follower, or media-
tor? How may that experience carry over to your clinical work?
4. What intimidates you most about doing couple work? Why? What
types of support do you need to feel less anxious, more secure?
5. What biases about gender might you bring with you to couple ther-
apy—that women complain too much, for example, or that men are
too cold or silent?
Chapter 2
The Basics
Clinical Goals and Tasks
“We always argue about the kids.”
“My husband is threatening to leave.”
“We don’t ever talk. We don’t seem to have anything in common.”
“My wife told me she was having an affair. We are here to see if we
can work things out.”
“We never have sex anymore.”
“After our last fight the judge and my lawyer told us we need to come
here and talk to you.”
There are many reasons why couples come for therapy. Some are clearly
at the edge. A precipitating event—a violent argument, an affair, or a
decision by one partner to separate—threatens to collapse the entire
relationship or has become the last straw. Others come not because they
have hit bottom, but because they worry that they are gradually moving
toward it—partners who feel that they have little in common and who
dread those long weekends when their children are away at sleepovers
and they’re left together alone in an empty house. And then there are
those couples who come but are questioning the whole idea of therapy
itself. Their doctor referred them, or the judge ordered them, and they
are skeptical, angry, or going through the motions. They believe that
what goes on between them is really none of your business or that talk-
ing to a stranger is certainly not a way to make anything better.
15
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question as to the function and purpose of that strange
Mesopotamian institution of temple-prostitutes. But, leaving this latter
alone for the moment, we find explicit testimony in Herodotus to the
fact with which we are immediately concerned. In describing the
great temple of Bel at Babylon,265.1 he asserts, on the authority of
his “Chaldean priests,” that the deity chose as his nightly partner
some native woman, who was supposed to pass the night on the
couch with him, and who was obliged to abstain from all other
intercourse with men; and he compares a similar practice of belief
found in the temple of Zeus in Egyptian Thebes, and in the oracular
shrine of Apollo at Patara in Lycia. Now Herodotus’ trustworthiness
in this matter has been doubted by Assyriologists;265.2 nevertheless,
a phrase used in the code of Hammurabi concerning a holy woman
dedicated to temple service, calling her “a wife of Marduk,” seems to
give some colour to the Herodotean statement.265.3 Only, this term
might have merely a spiritual-symbolic significance, like the
designation of a nun as “the bride of Christ”; for the original
Babylonian documents have supplied as yet, so far as I am aware,
no evidence of a woman fulfilling the rôle of Belit, the wife of Bel.
As regards the adjacent religions, the idea that a mortal might
enter into this mode of communion with the divinity was probably an
ancient heritage of the Phrygian religions, for it crops up in various
forms. The priest of Attis was himself called Attis, and, therefore,
probably had loving intercourse with the goddess, and the later
mysteries of Kybele extended this idea and offered to every votary
the glory of a mystic marriage;266.1 it was the unconscious stimulus
of an immemorial tradition that prompted the Phrygian heresiarch
Montanus to give himself out as the husband of the Virgin Mary.266.2
It also appears as a fundamental tenet of the Sabazian mystery and
of the Hellenistic-Egyptian Hermetic theosophy. The simple ritual-
fact, namely, that a woman serves as the bride of the god, could
probably be traced far afield through many widely distant peoples.
According to Sahagun,266.3 the human sacrifices of the Mexicans
had sometimes the purpose of sending away a woman victim into
divine wedlock. In pre-Christian Sweden we find a priestess
generally regarded as the wife of the god Freyr, and enjoying
considerable power from the connection.266.4 Similar examples can
be quoted from modern savage communities. Therefore if we find
the same institution in the Mediterranean, we shall not think it
necessary to suppose that it was an import from Babylon or from any
Semitic people. As regards the Minoan worship, it is legitimate at
least to regard the legend of Pasiphaë and her amour with the bull-
god as an unfortunate aetiologic myth distorting the true sense of a
ritual in which a mortal woman enjoyed this kind of divine
communion, and here again we should mark a religious affinity
between Crete and Phrygia. And it is likely that the idea was not
unfamiliar to the Hellenes, though the record of it is scanty and
uncertain. According to the early Christian fathers, the inspiration of
the Pythia of Delphi was due to a corporeal union with Apollo akin at
least to—if not identical with—sexual intercourse. Of more value is
Herodotus’ definite assertion that the priestess of Patara gained her
inspiration by her nuptial union with Apollo. In the rare cases where
the cult of a Hellenic god was administered by a priestess we may
suspect that a ἱερὸς γάμος was part of the temple-ritual; in the two
examples that I have been able to find, the cults of Poseidon at
Kalaureia and of Heracles at Thespiai, the priestess must be a
maiden, as on this theory would be natural.267.1 The maiden-
priestesses of the Leukippides, the divine brides of the Dioskouroi at
Sparta, were themselves called Leukippides; in all probability
because they were their mortal representatives in some ceremony of
holy marriage.267.2 But the most salient and explicitly recorded
example is the yearly marriage of the Queen-Archon at Athens with
Dionysos, the bull-god, in the feast of Anthesteria, the significance of
which I have discussed elsewhere.267.3 It seems that the Queen by
uniting her body with the god’s, unites to him the whole Athenian
state and secures its prosperity and fruitfulness; this historic fact may
also explain the myth of the union of Althaia, Queen of Kalydon, with
the same god. Finally, let us observe that nothing in any of these
Hellenic records suggests any element of what we should call
impurity in the ritual; we are not told that these holy marriages were
ever consummated by the priest as the human representative of the
god; or that the ceremony involved any real loss of virginity in the
maiden-priestess. The marriage could have been consummated
symbolically by use of a puppet or image of the deity. We may
believe that the rite descends from pre-Homeric antiquity; the ritual
which the Queen-Archon performed might naturally have been
established at the time of the adoption into Athens of the Dionysiac
cult, and there are reasons for dating this event earlier than 1000
B.C.268.1
We now come to a very difficult and important question concerning
the position of women in the old Mesopotamian temple-ritual. Our
first document of value is the code of Hammurabi, in which we find
certain social regulations concerning the status of a class of women
designated by a name which Winckler translates doubtfully as
“God’s-sisters,” regarding it, however, as equivalent to consecrated,
while Johns translates it merely as “votary.”268.2 At least, we have
proof of a class of holy women who have certain privileges and are
under certain restrictions. They were the daughters of good families
dedicated by their fathers to religion; they could inherit property,
which was exempt from the burden of army-tax; they could not
marry, and were prohibited from setting-up or even entering a wine-
shop under penalty of death. It is something to know even as much
as this about them, but we would very gladly learn more. Is it to their
order that the personage described as “the wife of Marduk”269.1
belongs, who has been considered above? Is it from among them
that the priestesses of Ishtar were chosen, who interpreted the
oracles of the goddess?269.2 It seems clear that a father could
dedicate his daughter to any divinity, that their position was
honourable, and that they are not to be identified with the temple-
prostitutes of Babylon or Erech, who excited the wonder and often
the reprobation of the later Greek world. This peculiar order of
temple-harlots is also recognised—according to some of the best
authorities269.3—in Hammurabi’s code, where they are mentioned in
the same context with the “consecrated” or the “God-sisters,” and yet
are clearly distinct from them; another clause seems to refer to male
prostitutes (§ 187). Certain rules are laid down concerning their
inheritance of property, and concerning the rearing of their children, if
they had any, who might be adopted into private families. Evidently
these “Qadishtu” were a permanent institution, and there is no hint of
any dishonour. There may be other references in Babylonian
literature to these temple-women; in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the
courtesan who won over Eabani evidently belongs to the retinue of
Ishtar of Erech.
From these two institutions we must distinguish that other, for
which Herodotus is our earliest authority:269.4 according to his
explicit statement, once in her lifetime every Babylonian woman,
high or low, had to stand in the temple-precincts of the goddess
Mylitta—probably a functional appellative of Ishtar, meaning “the
helper of childbirth”—and to prostitute herself to any stranger who
threw money into her lap and claimed her with the formula, “I invoke
the goddess Mylitta for you.” Herodotus hastens to assure us that
this single act of unchastity—which took place outside the temple—
did not afterwards lower the morality of the women, who, as he
declares, were otherwise exemplary in this respect. But he is
evidently shocked by the custom, and the early Christian and
modern writers have quoted it as the worst example of gross pagan
or Oriental licentiousness. Some devoted Assyriologists have tried to
throw doubt on the historian’s veracity:270.1 the wish is father to the
thought: and it is indeed difficult for the ordinary civilised man to
understand how an ancient civilisation of otherwise advanced
morality could have sanctioned such a practice. But Herodotus’
testimony ought not to be so impugned; nor is it sufficient evidence
for rejecting it that no reference to the custom which he describes
has been found hitherto in the cuneiform literature. Strabo merely
repeats what Herodotus has said; but independent evidence of some
value is gathered from the apocryphal Epistle of Jeremias:270.2 “The
women also with cords about them sit in the ways, burning bran for
incense; but if any of them, drawn by some that pass by, lie with
them, she reproacheth her fellow that she was not thought as worthy
as herself, nor her cord broken.” The context is altogether religious,
and this is no ordinary secular immorality; certain details in the
narrative remind us of Herodotus, and make it clear that the writer
has in mind the same social usage that the historian vouches for.
This usage may be described as the consecration to the goddess of
the first-fruits of the woman’s virginity before marriage; for, though
Herodotus does not explicitly say that it was a rite preliminary to
marriage, yet the records of similar practices elsewhere in Asia
Minor assure us on this point.
We have now to begin the comparative search in the adjacent
regions, keeping distinct the three types of consecration which I have
specified above, which are too often confused.271.1
The first type has its close analogies with the early Christian,
mediaeval, and modern conventual life of women. The code of
Hammurabi presents us with the earliest example of what may be
called the religious sisterhood; the Babylonian votaries were
dedicated to religion, and while the Christian nuns are often called
the brides of Christ, their earliest prototypes enjoyed the less
questionable title of “God’s-sisters.” We find no exact parallel to this
practice in ancient Greece; from the earliest period, no doubt, the
custom prevailed of consecrating individual women of certain
families as priestesses to serve certain cults, and sometimes chastity
was enforced upon them; but these did not form a conventual
society; and usually, apart from their occasional religious duties, they
could lead a secular life. In fact, the monastic system was of Eastern
origin and only reached Europe in later times, being opposed to the
civic character of the religion of the old Aryan states.
The second class of consecrated women served as temple-harlots
in certain cult-centres of Asia Minor. We cannot say that the custom
in all cases emanated from Babylon; for there is reason to think that
it was a tradition attaching to the cult of the goddess among the
polytheistic Semitic stocks. We have clear allusions in the Bible to
temple-prostitution practised by both sexes in the Canaanite
communities adjacent to the Israelites, who were themselves
sometimes contaminated by the practice.272.1 We hear of “hierodouli”
among the pagan Arabs,272.2 of women “of the congregation of the
people of Astarte” at Carthage,272.3 of numbers of dedicated slave
women in the cult of Aphrodite at Eryx,272.4 which was at least semi-
Semitic; and it is likely that some of these at least were devoted to
the impure religious practice. As regards non-Semitic worships, it is
only clearly attested of two, namely, of the worship of Mā at Comana
in Pontos,272.5 and of Aphrodite Ourania in Corinth.272.6 In these
cases we have the right to assume Semitic influences at work; for we
do not find traces of this practice in the ancient cult of Kybele; and
Ma of Cappadocia and Pontus, who had affinities with her, was partly
contaminated with Anahita, a Persian goddess, who had taken on
Babylonian fashions. Nor can we doubt that the practice gained
recognition at Corinth in post-Homeric times through its Oriental
trade; for it was attached to the cult of Aphrodite Ourania, whose
personality, partly at least, was identical with that of the Semitic
goddess. The practice survived in Lydia in the later period of the
Graeco-Roman culture. For a woman of Tralles, by name Aurelia
Aemilia, erected a column with an inscription that has been
published by Sir William Ramsay,273.1 in which she proclaims with
pride that she had prostituted herself in the temple service “at the
command of an oracle,” and that her female ancestors had done
likewise. Finally, we may find the cult-practice reflected in certain
legends; in the legend of Iconium, for instance, of the woman who
enticed all strangers to her embraces and afterwards slew them, but
was herself turned to stone by Perseus, and whose stone image
gave the name to the State.273.2
The other custom recorded by Herodotus of Babylon, the
consecration of the first-fruits of virginity to the goddess before
marriage, which I have considered as distinct from the foregoing,
may often have been combined or confused with it; for the temple-
harlotry, carried on for some considerable period, might be
occasionally a preliminary to marriage. The most exact parallels to
the Babylonian custom are found in the records of Byblos, Cyprus,
and the Syrian Heliopolis or Baalbec. Lucian attests the rule
prevailing at Byblos, that in the festival of Adonis women exposed
themselves for purchase on one single day, and that only strangers
were allowed to enjoy them; but that this service was only imposed
upon them if they refused to cut off their hair in lamentation for
Adonis.274.1 Similarly the Byzantine historian Sozomenos declared
that at Heliopolis (Baalbec), in the temple of Astarte, each maiden
was obliged to prostitute herself before marriage, until the custom
and the cult were abolished by Constantine.274.2 The statements
about Cyprus, though less explicit, point to the same institution:
Herodotus, having described at length the Babylonian practice,
declares that it prevailed in Cyprus also, and Justin274.3 that it was a
custom of the Cyprians “to send their virgins before marriage on
fixed days to the shore, to earn their dowry by prostitution, so as to
pay a first-offering to Venus for their virtue henceforth (pro reliqua
pudicitia libamenta Veneri soluturas).” The procession to the shore
may indicate the rule that intercourse was only allowed them with
strangers,274.4 and nothing points to prolonged prostitution. It is
probably the same rite that the Locrians of the West vowed to
perform in honour of Aphrodite in the event of deliverance from a
dangerous war.275.1 But in the worship of Anaitis at Akilisene in
Armenia, according to Strabo,275.2 the unmarried women served as
temple-harlots for an indefinite time until they married; and Aurelia
Aemilia of Tralles may have been only maintaining the same ancient
ritual in Lydia. In these two countries, then, it seems as if there had
been a fusion of two institutions that elsewhere were distinct one
from another, harlot-service for a prolonged period in a temple, and
the consecration of each maiden’s virginity as a preliminary to
marriage.
Such institutions mark the sharpest antagonism between the early
religious sentiment of the East and the West. Of no European State
is there any record, religious or other, that the sacrifice before
marriage of a woman’s virginity to a mortal was at any time regarded
as demanded by temple ritual. Such a rite was abhorrent to the
genuine Hellenic, as it was to the Hebraic, spirit; and only in later
times do we find one or two Hellenic cult-centres catching the taint of
the Oriental tradition: while such legends as that of Melanippos and
Komaitho and the story of Laokoon’s sin express the feeling of horror
which any sexual licence in a temple aroused in the Greek.275.3
It is imperative to try to understand the original purpose or
significance of the Semitic and Anatolian rites that we have been
dealing with. To regard them as the early Christian and some
modern writers have done, as mere examples of unbridled Oriental
lust masquerading in the guise of religion, is a false and unjust view.
According to Herodotus, the same society that ordained this sacrifice
of virginity upon the daughters of families maintained in other
respects a high standard of virtue, which appears also attested by
Babylonian religious and secular documents. Modern anthropology
has handled the problem with greater insight and seriousness; but
certain current explanations are not convincing. To take the rite
described by Herodotus first, which is always to be distinguished
from the permanent institution of “hierodulai” in the sense of temple-
harlots: Mannhardt, who was the first to apply modern science to the
problem, explained it as a development of vegetation-ritual.276.1
Aphrodite and Adonis, Ishtar and Tammuz, represent vegetation, and
their yearly union causes general fertility; the women are playing the
part of the goddess, and the stranger represents Adonis! The
Babylonian rite, then, is partly religious μιμησις, the human acting of
a divine drama, partly religious magic good for the crops. But in spite
of Mannhardt’s great and real services to science, his vegetation-
theory leads him often astray, and only one who was desperately
defending a thesis would explain that stranger, a necessary
personage in the ritual at Babylon, Byblos, Cyprus, and Baalbec, as
the native god. There is no kind of reason for connecting the
Babylonian rite with Tammuz, or for supposing that the women were
representing the goddess,277.1 or that their act directly influenced the
crops, except in the sense that all due performance of religious
ceremonies has been considered at certain stages of belief as
favouring the prosperity of the land. Sir William Ramsay, in his Cities
and Bishoprics of Phrygia,277.2 would explain the custom as
preserving the tradition of the communism of women before regular
marriage was instituted. Dr. Frazer, who has dealt more fully with the
question, accepts this explanation,277.3 as he also accepts
Mannhardt’s in full; and, while he associates—as I think, wrongly—
the Babylonian rite with general temple-prostitution, he adds a third
suggestion, prompted by his theory of kingship: the king himself
might have to mate with one or more of the temple-harlots “who
played Astarte to his Adonis”:277.4 such unions might serve to
maintain the supply of human deities, one of whom might succeed to
the throne, and another might be sacrificed in his father’s stead
when religion demanded the life of the royal man-god. I do not find
this theory coherent even with itself; and, like the others, it fails to
explain all the facts, and, on the other hand, it imagines data which
are not given us by the records.
That state of communism when sexual union was entirely
promiscuous is receding further and further into the anthropological
background: it is dangerous to predicate it of the most backward
Anatolian State in any period which can come into our ken. When
the Byzantine Sokrates gravely tells us that the men of Heliopolis
had their wives in common, he does not know what he is saying. And
if this sacrifice of virginity before marriage was a recognition of the
original rights of all the males of the community, why did not some
representative of the community take the virginity, the priest or some
head-man? This ill-considered sociologic hypothesis shipwrecks on
that mysterious stranger.278.1
Prof. Westermarck, in his Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas,278.2 regards the Mylitta-rite as intended to ensure fertility in
women through direct appeal to the goddess of fertility, and he
explains the formula which the stranger uttered—ἐπικαλέω τοι τὴν
θεὸν Μύλιττα—as signifying generally “May the goddess Mylitta
prosper thee.” Obviously the phrase, “I invoke the goddess for thee,”
could as naturally mean, “I claim thee in the name of the goddess,”
the stranger basing his right to the woman on this appeal. But his
general theory appears not so unsound as those which have just
been noted.
The comparative method ought to help us here; and though we
have no exact parallel, as far as I am aware, recorded of any people
outside the Mediterranean area to the Babylonian custom, we find
usages reported elsewhere that agree with it in one essential.
Lubbock quotes instances from modern India of the rule imposed
upon women of presenting themselves before marriage in the temple
of Juggernaut for the purpose—as he implies—of offering up their
virginity, though no such custom is recorded in the Vedic period of
religion;278.3 cases also are chronicled of the rule prevailing among
uncultured or semi-cultured tribes that the medicine-man or the
priest should take the virginity of the bride before the marriage
ceremony.279.1 These are probably illustrations of the working of the
same idea as that which inspired the Babylonian custom. Marriage
involves the entering upon a new state; change of life is generally
dangerous, and must be safeguarded by what Van Gennep has
called “rites de passage”; more especially is the sexual union with a
virgin dangerous and liable to be regarded with awe by primitive
sentiment; before it is safe to marry her, the tabu that is upon her
must first be removed by a religious act securing the divinity’s
sanction for the removal; just as the ripe cornfield must not be
reaped before religious rites, such as the consecration of first-fruits,
have loosened the tabu upon it: we may believe that Hellenic
marriage ritual secured the same end as the Babylonian by what
seems to us the more innocent method of offering the προτέλεια. So
the Babylonian safeguards the coming marriage by offering the first-
fruits of his daughter to the goddess who presides over the powers
and processes of life and birth. Under her protection, after appeal to
her, the process loses its special danger; or if there is danger still, it
falls upon the head of the stranger.279.2 For I can find no other way of
accounting for his presence as a necessary agent, in the ritual of at
least four widely separate communities of Semitic race: this
comparative ubiquity prevents us explaining it as due to some
capricious accidental impulse of delicacy, as if the act would become
less indelicate if a stranger who would not continue in the place
participated in it.
In his essay on the question, Mr. Hartland explains the Babylonian
rite as belonging to the class of puberty-ceremonies; nor would this
account of it conflict with the view here put forth, if, as he maintains,
primitive puberty-ceremonies to which girls are subjected are usually
preliminary to the marriage which speedily follows.280.1 But puberty-
ceremonies are generally performed at initiation-mysteries, and none
of the rites that we are considering appear to have been associated
with mysteries except, perhaps, at Cyprus, where the late record
speaks of mysteries instituted by Kinyras that had a sexual
significance, and which may have been the occasion of the
consecration of virginity that Justin describes;280.2 but the institution
of mysteries has not yet been proved for any purely Semitic religion.
In any case, Mr. Hartland’s statement does not explain why the loss
of virginity should be considered desirable in a puberty-ceremony or
as a preliminary to marriage.
The significance of the action, as I have interpreted it, is negative
rather than positive, the avoidance of a vague peril or the removal of
a tabu rather than the attainment of the blessing of fertility, as Dr.
Westermarck would regard it. And this idea, the removal of a tabu,
seems expressed in the phrase of Herodotus281.1 by which he
describes the state of the woman after the ceremony—
ἀποσιωσαμένη τῇ θεῷ; and the parallel that I have suggested, the
consecration of the first-fruits of the harvest to remove the tabu from
the rest of the crop, is somewhat justified by the words of Justin
already quoted—“pro reliqua pudicitia libamenta Veneri soluturas.”
As regards the other institution, the maintenance of “hierodoulai” in
temples as “consecrated” women, “kadeschim,” unmarried, who for a
period of years indulged in sexual intercourse with visitors, the
original intention and significance of it is hard to decide. We may be
sure that it did not originate in mere profligacy, and the inscription of
Tralles shows that even in the later Roman period it had not lost its
religious prestige.281.2 Such a custom could naturally arise in a
society that allowed freedom of sexual intercourse among young
unmarried persons—and this is not uncommonly found at a primitive
level of culture—and that was devoted to the worship of a goddess
of sexual fertility. The rituals in the temples of Ishtar of Erech, Anaitis
of Armenia, Mā of Comana, must have been instituted for some
national and social purpose; therefore Mr. Hartland’s suggestion, that
the original object of the Armenian rite was to give the maidens a
chance of securing themselves a suitable husband by experience,
seems insufficient. Dr. Frazer’s theory, that connects the institution
with some of the mystic purposes of kingship,282.1 floats in the air; for
there is not a particle of evidence showing any relation between
these women and the monarch or the royal harem or the
monarchical succession or the death of a royal victim. A simpler
suggestion is that the “hierodoulai,” or temple-women, were the
human vehicles for diffusing through the community the peculiar
virtue or potency of the goddess, the much-coveted blessing of
human fertility. Thus to consecrate slaves or even daughters to this
service was a pious social act.
The significance of the facts that we have been examining is of the
highest for the history of religious morality, especially for the varied
history of the idea of purity. We call this temple-harlotry vile and
impure; the civilised Babylonian, who in private life valued purity and
morality, called the women “kadistu,” that is, “pure” or clean in the
ritualistic sense, or as Zimmern interprets the ideogram, “not
unclean.”282.2 In fact, the Mediterranean old-world religions, all save
the Hebraic, agreed in regarding the processes of the propagation of
life as divine, at least as something not alien or abhorrent to
godhead. But the early Christian propagandists, working here on
Hebraic lines, intensified the isolation of God from the simple
phenomena of birth, thereby engendering at times an anti-sexual
bias, and preparing a discord between any possible biological view
and the current religious dogma, and modern ethical thought has not
been wholly a gainer thereby.
The subject that has been discussed at some length is also
connected with the whole question of ritual-purity and purification.
The primitive conception of purity had at an early stage in its
evolution been adopted by higher religion; and the essential effect of
impurity was to debar a person from intercourse with God and with
his fellow-men. Hence arises a code of rules to regulate temple-
ritual. So far as I am aware, the Babylonian rules for safeguarding
the purity of the shrines were not conspicuously different from the
Greek or the Hebraic.283.1 The taint of bloodshed and other physical
impurities was kept aloof; and it is in the highest degree probable
that the function of the “hetairai” was only performed outside the
temple, for Herodotus specially tells us that this rule was observed in
the Mylitta-rite. The cathartic methods of East and West agree in
many points. The use of holy water for purifying purposes was
known to the early Greeks.283.2 It was still more in evidence in the
Babylonian ritual: the holy water of the Euphrates or Tigris was used
for a variety of purposes, for the washing of the king’s hands before
he touched the statues, for the washing of the idol’s mouths,283.3
perhaps also for baptism. For we hear of some such rite in a hymn to
Enlil translated by Dr. Langdon284.1—the line that he renders “Son
whom in the sacred bowl she baptized,” seems to refer to a human
child. Ablution was prominent also in the exorcism-ritual, and the
“House of Washing” or “House of Baptism” was the centre of a liturgy
that had for its object deliverance from demons.284.2 The whole State
was at times purified by water.284.3 And in all this ritual the water
must itself be of a peculiar purity—rain-water, for instance,284.4 or the
water of the Euphrates, whence came probably the Water of Life that
was kept in Marduk’s temple with which the Gods and the Annunaki
washed their faces, and which was used in the feast of the Doom-
fixing.284.5 According to the Babylonian view ordinary water was
naturally impure (we may well believe that it was so at Babylon,
where the river and canals were so pressed into the service of man),
and a person incurred impurity by stepping over a puddle or other
unpurified water.284.6 The Greek did not need to be so scrupulous,
for most water in his land was naturally pure, being spring or brook;
yet in his cathartic rules we find often that only a special water was
suitable for the religious purpose, running water especially, or sea-
water, or in a particular locality one sacred fountain only.284.7 But
though it was to him as to most peoples, the simple and natural
means of purification, he did not apply it to such various cathartic
purposes as the Babylonian. Nor as far as we can discover had he
developed in old days the interesting rite of baptism: we hear of it
first in the records of the fifth century, and in relation to alien cults
like that of the Thracian goddess Kotytto.285.1
Equally prominent in the cathartic ritual of Mesopotamia was the
element of fire: in the prayer that followed upon the purification-
ceremonies we find the formula, “May the torch of the gleaming Fire-
God cleanse me.”285.2 The Fire-God, Nusku, is implored “to burn
away the evil magicians,”285.3 and we may believe that he owes his
development and exalted position as a high spiritual god to the ritual
use of fire, just as in the Vedic religion did Agni. The conception of
fire as a mighty purifying element, which appears in the Old and New
Testaments and in Christian eschatology, has arisen, no doubt, from
the cathartic ritual of the ancient Semites. Doubtless also the
spiritual or magic potency of this element was known in ancient
Europe: it is clearly revealed in the primitive ceremonies of the old
German “Notfeuer,” with which the cattle, fields, and men were
purified in time of pestilence.285.4 And there are several indications of
its use in Greek cathartic ritual; a noteworthy example is the
purification of Lemnos by the bringing of holy fire from Delos;285.5 the
curious Attic ritual of running with the new-born babe round the
hearth, called the Amphidromia, may have had a similar
intention;286.1 even the holy water, the χέρνιψ, seems to have been
hallowed by the insertion of a torch;286.2 and in the later records fire
is often mentioned among the usual implements of cleansing.286.3
The Eleusinian myth concerning Demeter holding the infant
Demophon in the flame to make him immortal was suggested
probably by some purificatory rite in which fire was used. Finally, the
fire-ordeal, which was practised both in Babylonia and Greece,286.4
may have been associated at a certain period with the cathartic
properties of fire. Nevertheless, the Hellenic divinities specially
concerned with this element, Hestia and Hephaistos, had little
personal interest in this ritual, and did not rise to the same height in
the national theology as Nusku rose in the Babylonian.
We might find other coincidences in detail between Hellenic and
Assyrian ritual, such as the purificatory employment of salt, onions,
and the sacrificial skin of the animal-victim.286.5 One of the most
interesting phenomena presented by the cathartic law of old
Babylonia is a rule that possessed an obvious moral value; we find,
namely, on one of the cylinders of Gudea, that during the period
when Gudea was purifying the city the master must not strike the
slave, and no action at law must be brought against any one; for
seven days perfect equality reigned, no bad word was uttered, the
widow and the orphan went free from wrong.287.1 The conception
underlying this rule is intelligible: all quarrelling and oppression,
being often accompanied with bloodshed and death, disturbs the
general purity which is desired to prevail; and I have indicated
elsewhere a similar law regulating the conduct of the Eleusinian
mysteries and the Dionysiac festival at Athens, both ceremonies of
cathartic value,287.2 and I have pointed out a similar ordinance
observed recently by a North-American Indian tribe, and formerly by
the Peruvians; to these instances may be added the statement by
Livy,287.3 that in the Roman “lectisternia,” when a table with offerings
was laid before the gods, no quarrelling was allowed and prisoners
were released, and the historian gives to the institution of the
lectisternia a piacular significance.
We must also bear in mind certain striking differences between the
Hellenic and the Babylonian cathartic systems. In certain purification-
ceremonies of Hellas, those in which the homicide was purged from
his stain, the washing with the blood of the piacular victim was the
most potent means of grace.287.4 We may find analogies in Vedic,
Roman, and Hebraic ritual, but hitherto none have been presented
by the religious documents of Babylon, where, as has been already
pointed out, scarcely any mystic use appears to have been made of
the blood of the victim.288.1 Again, the Babylonian purification
included the confession of sins, a purgation unknown and apparently
unnatural to the Hellene;288.2 and generally the Babylonian, while
most of its methods, like the Hellenic, are modes of transference or
physical riddance of impurity, had a higher spiritual and religious
significance; for it includes lamentations for sin and prayers to the
divinity that are not mentioned in the record of any Greek “katharsis.”
A long ritual-document is preserved containing the details of the
purification of the king:288.3 certain forms agree with the Hellenic, but
one who was only versed in the latter would find much that was
strange and unintelligible both in the particulars and in general
atmosphere. We discern an interesting mixture of magic and religion.
The gods are partly entreated, partly bribed, partly constrained; and
at the end the evil is physically expelled from the palace. The purifier
puts on dark garments, just as the ministers of the underworld-
deities did occasionally in Greece. The king himself performs much
of the ceremony, and utters words of power: “May my sins be rent
away, may I be pure and live before Shamash.” The ordering of the
cathartic apparatus is guided partly by astrology. It is curious also to
find that every article used in the process is identified by name with
some divinity: the cypress is the god Adad, the fragrant spices the
god Ninib, the censer the god Ib, etc.; and the commentary that
accompanies the ritual-text explains that these substances compel
the deities thus associated with them to come and give aid.
In fact, the differences between East and West in this religious
sphere are so important that we should not be able to believe that
the cathartic system of Greece was borrowed from Babylonia, even if
the points of resemblance were much more numerous and striking
than they are. For it would be possible to draw up a striking list of
coincidences between Hellenic and Vedic cathartic rites, and yet no
one would be able on the strength of it to establish a hypothesis of
borrowing.
In any case, it may be said, the question of borrowing does not
arise within the narrow limits of our inquiry, which is limited to the
pre-Homeric period, since all Greek “katharsis” is post-Homeric. The
latter dictum is obviously not literally true, as a glance through the
Homeric poems will prove. Homer is aware of the necessity of
purification by water before making prayer or libation to the gods:
Achilles washes his hands and the cups before he pours forth wine
and prays to Zeus,289.1 Telemachos washes his hands in sea-water
before he prays to Athena289.2; and there is a significant account of
the purification of the whole Achaean host after the plague;289.3 as
the later Greeks would have done, the Achaeans throw away into the
sea their λύματα, the infected implements of purification, wool or
whatever they used, that absorbed the evil from them. But it has
been generally observed that Homer does not appear to have been
aware of any need for purification from the stain of bloodshed or
from the ghostly contagion of death. It is true that Odysseus purifies
his hall with fire and sulphur after slaying the suitors, but we are not
sure that the act had any further significance than the riddance of the
smell of blood from the house. Sulphur is there called κακῶν
ἄκος,290.1 “a remedy against evil things”; but we cannot attach any
moral or spiritual sense to κακὰ, nor is Homeric κάθαρσις related, as
far as we can see, to any animistic belief. There is one passage
where Homer’s silence is valuable and gives positive evidence;
Theoklumenos, who has slain a man of his own tribe and fled from
his home, in consequence approaches Telemachos when the latter
is sacrificing and implores and receives his protection: there is no
hint of any feeling that there is a stain upon him, or that he needs
purification, or that his presence pollutes the sacrifice.290.2 All this
would have been felt by the later Greek; and in the post-Homeric
period we have to reckon with a momentous growth of the idea of
impurity and of a complex system of purification, especially in regard
to homicide, leading to important developments in the sphere of law
and morality which I have tried to trace out on other occasions.290.3
But Homer may well be regarded as the spokesman of a gifted race,
the Achaeans, as we call them, on whom the burden of the doctrine
of purification lay lightly, and for whom the ghostly world had
comparatively little terror or interest. Besides the Achaeans,
however, and their kindred races there was the submerged
population of the older culture who enter into the composition of the
various Hellenes of history. Therefore the varied development in the
post-Homeric period of cathartic ideas may be only a renaissance, a
recrudescence of forces that were active enough in the second
millennium. Attica may have been the home where the old tradition
survived, and cathartic rites such as the Thargelia and the trial of the
axe for murder in the Bouphonia have the savour of great antiquity.
May not the Minoan religion of Crete have been permeated with the
ideas of the impurity of bloodshed and the craving for purification
from sin? For at the beginning of the historic period Crete seems to
have been the centre of what may be called the cathartic mission;
from this island came Apollo Delphinios, the divine purifier par
excellence, to this island the god came to be purified from the death
of Python; and in later times, Crete lent to Athens its purifying
prophet Epimenides.291.1 If we believe, then, that the post-Homeric
blood-purification was really a recrudescence of the tradition of an
older indigenous culture, we should use this as another argument for
the view that the Greece of the second millennium was untouched or
scarcely touched by Babylonian influence. For, as we have seen,
purification by blood or from blood appears to have been wholly alien
to Babylonian religious and legal practice.
The ritual of purification belongs as much to the history of magic
as religion. Now, the student of religion is not permitted to refuse to
touch the domain of magic; nor can we exclude its consideration
even from the highest topics of religious speculation. Some general
remarks have already been made291.2 concerning the part played by
magic both in the worship and in the social life of the peoples that we
are comparing. Any exact and detailed comparison would be fruitless
for our present purpose; for, while the knowledge of early Babylonian
magic is beginning to be considerable, we cannot say that we know
anything definite concerning the practices in this department of the
Hellenic and adjacent peoples in the early period with which we are
dealing. From the Homeric poems we can gather little more than that
magic of some kind existed; and that Homer and his gifted audience
probably despised it as they despised ghosts and demons. It is only
by inference that we can venture to ascribe to the earliest period of
the Greek race some of the magic rites that are recorded by the later
writers. It would require a lengthy investigation and treatise to range
through the whole of Greek ritual and to disentangle and expose the
magic element which was undoubtedly there, and which in some
measure is latent in the ritual of every higher religion yet examined.
By way of salient illustration we may quote the ceremonies of the
scapegoat and the φαρμακός,292.1 modes of the magic-transference
of sin and evil; the strewing of sacred food-stuff that is instinct with
divine potency over the fields in the Thesmophoria; the rain magic
performed by the priests of Zeus Lykaios;292.2 we hear at Kleonai of
an official class of “Magi” who controlled the wind and the weather by
spells, and occasionally in their excitement gashed their own hands,
like the priests of Baal;292.3 such blood-magic being explicable as a
violent mode of discharging personal energy upon the outer objects
which one wishes to subdue to one’s will. Another and more thrilling
example of blood-magic is the process of water-finding by pouring
human blood about the earth, a method revealed by an old legend of
Haliartos in Boeotia about the man who desired water, and in order
to find it consulted Delphi, and was recommended by the oracle to
slay the first person who met him on his return; his own young son
met him first, and the father stabbed him with his sword; the
wounded youth ran round about, and wherever the blood dripped
water sprang up from the earth.293.1 No one will now venture to say
that all these things are post-Homeric; the natural view is that they
were an inheritance of crude and primitive thought indigenous to the
land. Many of them belong to world-wide custom; on the other hand,
some of the striking and specialised rites, such as the blood-magic
and the ritual of the φαρμακός, are not found at Babylon.
But before prejudging the question, some salient and peculiar
developments of Babylonian magic ought to be considered. One
great achievement of Mesopotamian civilisation was the early
development of astrology, to which perhaps the whole world has
been indebted for good and for evil, and which was associated with
magic and put to magic uses. Astrological observation led to the
attachment of a magic value to numbers and to certain special
numbers, such as number seven. Whether the Judaic name and
institution of the Sabbath is of Babylonian origin or not, does not
concern our question. But it concerns us to know that the seventh
days, the 14th, the 21st, and 28th of certain months, if not of all,
were sacred at Babylon, and were days of penance and piacular
duties when ordinary occupation was suspended.293.2 We can
discern the origin of the sanctity of this number: the observation of
the seven planets, and the division of the lunar month into four
quarters of seven days. The early Greeks, doubtless, had their
astrological superstitions, as most races have had; the new moon is
naturally lucky, the waning moon unlucky; but no one can discover
any numerical or other principle in the Hesiodic system, which is our
earliest evidence of Hellenic lucky and unlucky days. His scheme is
presented in naïve confusion, and he concludes humorously, “one
man praises one day, one another, and few know anything about
it.”294.1 His page of verse reflects the anarchy of the Greek
calendars; and we should find it hard to credit that either Hesiod or
the legislators that drew up those had sat attentively at the feet of
Babylonian teachers. But a few coincidences may be noted. Hesiod
puts a special tabu on the fifth day of the month; in fact, it is the only
one in his list that is wholly unlucky, a day when it would seem to be
best to do nothing at all, at least outside the house, for on this day
the Erinyes are wandering about.294.2 Now, a Babylonian text
published by Dr. Langdon contains the dogma that on the fifth day of
Nisan “he who fears Marduk and Zarpanit shall not go out to
work.”294.3 This Babylonian rule is the earliest example of what may
be strictly called Sabbatarianism, abstinence from work through fear
of offending the high god. Such would probably not be the true
account of Hellenic feeling concerning the “forbidden days,” which
were called ἀποφράδες or μιαραί.294.4 The high god had issued to
the Hellene no moral commandment about “keeping the Sabbath-
day holy”; his reluctance to do certain work on certain days rested on
a more primitive sentiment concerning them. Thus it was unlucky
both for himself and the city that Alcibiades should return to the
Piraeus when the Plynteria were going on; for this latter was a
cathartic ceremony, and evil influences were abroad. Nor, as
Xenophon declares, would any one venture to engage in a serious
work on this day.295.1 Nor were these μιαραὶ ᾑμέραι, like the seventh
days of the Babylonian months, necessarily days of gloom when
offended deities had to be propitiated; on the contrary, the day of
Χόες was a day of merry drinking and yet μιαρά: in fact, we best
understand the latter phrase by translating it “tabooed,” rather than
“sad” or “gloomy.”295.2
Another coincidence that may arrest attention is that in Hesiod’s
scheme the seventh day of the month was sacred because Apollo
was born on it; and throughout the later period this god maintains his
connection with the seventh day, also apparently with the first, the
fourteenth, and the twentieth of the month.295.3 This almost coincides
with the Sabbatical division of the Babylonian months. But we cannot
suppose that in Hellas these were days of mortification as they were
in the East; else they would not have been associated with the bright
deity Apollo.
Such dubious coincidences, balanced by still more striking
diversities, are but frail supports for the hypothesis of race-contact.
In Babylonian thaumaturgy nothing is more significant than the
magic power of the Word, whether spoken or written: and the Word,
as we have noted, was raised to a cosmic divine power and
possessed inherent creative force.295.4 This is only a reflection upon
the heavens of the human use of the magical or mesmeric word or
set of words. This use of them is found, indeed, all round the globe.
What seems unique in the Mesopotamian culture is that religion,
religious literature, and poetry should have reached so high a pitch
and yet never have risen above or shaken off the magic which is its
constant accompaniment. Men and gods equally use magic against
the demons; the most fervid hymn of praise, the most pathetic litany,
is only part of an exorcism-ritual; and so inevitably does the shadow
of magic dog religion here that Dr. Langdon is justified in his
conjecture296.1 that in a great hymn to Enlil, which contains scarcely

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Textbook Doing Couple Therapy Craft and Creativity in Work With Intimate Partners 2Nd Edition Robert Taibbi Ebook All Chapter PDF

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Doing Couple Therapy Craft and

Creativity in Work with Intimate

Creating Cultural Safety in Couple and Family Therapy

Enhancing Couple Sexuality Creating an Intimate and

Clinical Interventions in Systemic Couple and Family

Systemic Couple Therapy and Depression First Edition.

Zen and Psychotherapy Partners in Liberation 2nd

The Marriage and Family Therapy Career Guide Doing Well

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Doing Environmental Ethics 3rd Edition Robert Traer

Doing Family Therapy, Third Edition:

The Guilford Press

All rights reserved

Except as noted, no part of this book may be reproduced,

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

LIMITED DUPLICATION LICENSE

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robert Taibbi, LCSW, has over 40 years’ experience as a clinician,

T here’s the well-known metaphor about writers thinking of

cally within sessions, rather than accumulating a new pile of concepts.

Chapter 1. Into the Fray: Theoretical Foundation 1

Chapter 2. The Basics: Clinical Goals and Tasks 15

Chapter 3. Relationship Obstacle 1: 41

Chapter 4. Relationship Obstacles 2 and 3: 58

Chapter 5. Beginnings: Structure and Tasks 75

Chapter 6. Beginnings in Action 96

Chapter 7. Middle Stages 118

Chapter 8. Termination 139

Chapter 9. The Developmental Landscape 155

Chapter 10. Treatment Maps for Common 176

Chapter 11. Treatment Maps for Common 200

Chapter 12. Treatment Maps for Common 222

Chapter 13. One Helping Two, Two Helping One: 244

Appendix A. Explanation of Emotional Wounds 271

Appendix B. Instructions for a First-Aid Plan 274

Appendix C. Instructions for Meditation 275

Appendix D. Instructions for the Emotional 276

Appendix E. Instructions for Using Mindfulness 278

Purchasers of this book can download and print

Into the Fray

This is what this book is about—learning to navigate the challenges that

LAYING THE FOUNDATION: THEORY

Couple therapy has historically been a stepchild of sorts in the therapy

next several decades couple work was incorporated into psychoanalytic

of child-rearing, just as many older, empty-nest couples are forced in

THE GOALS OF THIS BOOK

All this brings us to a set of clinical assumptions that will serve as a

The Power Is in the Process

The Solutions Are in the Holes

Problems Are Bad Solutions

tions transfers this image to relationships where what we often see as

People Naturally Grow and Change

Advocate for the Relationship

What does this shorthand mean? In the first line ½ + ½ refers to

CHARTING THE COURSE

LOOKING WITHIN: CHAPTER 1 EXERCISES

1. Write out your own theoretical orientation regarding couple therapy.

“We always argue about the kids.”

“My husband is threatening to leave.”

“We don’t ever talk. We don’t seem to have anything in common.”

“We never have sex anymore.”