Effectiveness of the Treatment Through Self-Differentiation on the Couples’ Marital Intimacy and Adjustment

Abstract

Abstract Introduction and purpose: the presence of intimacy and adjustment between the couples causes the family stability and the couples’ and children’s health. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of the treatment through self-differentiation on the couples’ marital intimacy and adjustment. Material and methods: it was an applied study in case of purpose and quasi-experimental in case of data collection method with pretest, posttest, control group and two-month follow-up design. The statistical population of the study included all the couples who referred to Healthy Family Consultation Center in the city of Qom in 2017. 16 couples (8 women and 8 men) who were willing to participate in the study were selected through convenient method and accommodated into experimental and control groups (each group of 8). The experimental group underwent 10 sessions of self-differentiation treatment during two-and-a-half months, while the control group didn’t receive the aforementioned interventions. The applied questionnaires included marital conflict questionnaire (Barati and Sanaei, 1998), marital intimacy questionnaire (Bagarouzi, 2001) and marital adaptation questionnaire (Spinner, 1976). The data from the study were analyzed through repeated measurement ANOVA method. Findings: the results showed that the treatment through self-differentiation method has significant effect on the couples’ marital intimacy and adaptation (p<0.001) such that it succeeded in the improvement of the couples’ marital intimacy (effect size 66%) and adaptation (effect size 66%). Conclusion: the findings of the present study indicated that the treatment through self-differentiation can be applied as an efficient method to improve the couples’ marital intimacy and adaptation through utilizing techniques such as fusion, making the couples aware of triangulation, explaining familial projection and the concept of affective cut.