List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Introduction
1. The Need for Marriage Counseling by and for Christian
Part 2: Understanding Marriage
2. Individuals and Their Coupling
3. Principles of Marriage within the Family
4. The Marriage throughout the Family Life Cycle
Part 3: Early Phase of Counseling Troubled Marriages
5. Overview of Counseling: Assessment, Intervention and Termination
6. Joining the Marriage
7. Assessing the Marriage
8. Setting Goals
9. Conducting Assessment and Feedback Sessions
Part 4: Changing Troubled Marriages
10. Promoting Change through Counseling
11. Changing Intimacy
12. Changing Communication
13. Changing Conflict
14. Changing Hurt, Blame and Sin
Part 5: Promting Commitment
15. Consolidating Changes
16. Termination
17. Commitment of the Conselor
Appendix: Current Theories of Marriage Counseling
Notes
Subject Index
Author Index

Marriages are in trouble today. That is clear. Effective mothods of combating this trend are less evident. Counselors, pastors and social workers need more than mere theories or mere moralizing. They need a practical and comprehensive model for understanding couples and their problems. They need a throughly Christian perspective that is biblical, compassionate and human. Everett Worthington provides this in an integrated, biblically based theory of marriage and marriage therapy with analysis at three levels: the individual, the couple and the family. The model he has constructed, with techniques drawn from the major psychological schools, is standard enough to guide counselors in actual interventions and powerful enough to produce change. A thoroughgoing overview of the assessment process includes practical, workable guidelines for: creating realistic, mutually-agreeable goals for counselor and clients; estimating the number of sessions needed to reach those goals; and planning the actual assessment, intervention and termination sessions. Next Worthington offers specific techniques for enhancing cooperative change, intimacy, communication, conflict resolution and forgiveness within the marriage. But keeping couples from slipping back into old patterns is one of the counselor's most difficult tasks. So Worthington concludes with suggestions for solidifying change and effectively concluding the counseling relationship. Here is a text that will be a standard for counselors, pastors and mental health professionals in the years to come.