Therapy

Contemporary couples therapy has its origins in several counseling movements. According to Carlfred Broderick and Sandra Schrader's (1991) history of marital and family therapy, couples therapy initially grew out of the marriage-counseling and sex therapy movements of the early twentieth century. Social workers recognized the need to work with the family and marital systems, as well as the individual, long before the growing fields of psychology and psychoanalysis. In addition, burgeoning interest in human sexuality and sex therapy, which grew out of the work of Havelock Ellis in Great Britain and Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany shortly after World War I, influenced the growing emphasis on the couple dyad. Marriage counseling, however, was not truly considered a profession until the 1960s and 1970s, when it developed a professional organization, journals, and standards. It was somewhat eclipsed by the more popular family therapy movement in the 1970s, though the two eventually became strongly linked, with shared journals, organizations, and practitioners. Today, although there are distinct theories and practices of marital and family therapy, there continue to be many shared links.