Therapy of the Difficult Divorce

Chronically warring couples, children used as pawns, spouses who prolong the moment of separation-these are the components of the "difficult divorce." Although families caught in these dilemmas are familiar to every therapist, most divorce therapies either focus too much on the adults' conflicts or stress the children's plight without helping the parents reorganize their lives. Drawing on the authors' longitudinal Families of Divorce Project, this superb clinical book presents for the first time an empirically tested approach that goes beyond these limits.The authors found that both children and adults fare best when the spouses learn to control their anger and focus on their children's welfare. By integrating family-therapy principles and individual dynamics, they have devised a unique method of face-to-face problem solving, sometimes with the entire family, often in sessions with individual members, to help restore parental responsibility and to realign relationships within the divorcing family. Therapy of the Difficult Divorce is authoritative, humane, and above all practical. It will be welcomed by all therapists as the classic guide to treating families of divorce.