Couples’ communication problems: The counselor's perspective

Abstract

Abstract Marital and relational counselors bring their normative ideas about couples’ communication to the therapeutic setting and these ideas become a part of the ongoing dialogue between counselors and their clients. Although many therapists emphasize couples’ communication problems as a source of relational difficulty, it is not clear how therapists conceive of, and explain, those problems. The current study addresses this issue by examining counselors’ perceptions of, and attributions for, couples’ communication problems. Interviews with 50 couples’ counselors suggest that communication problems are common among clients. The most frequently noted communication problems involved failing to take the other's perspective when listening, blaming the other for negative occurrences, and criticizing the other. Most of counselors’ attributions for couples’ communication problems referred to stable, unchanging causes and focused on external factors. A content analysis of the attributions further indicated that ...