ABSTRACT
in order to write this book, it has been necessary to speculate well beyond available data. We have based many of our suggestions on such nonexperimental sources as clinical experience and deductive reasoning. Although a substantial number of testable hypotheses can be abstracted from our manuscript, few of them have already been tested. Although the overall efficacy of a broadly-defined behavior exchange approach to treating couples is fairly well-established, the specific, fine-grained suggestions in this book have not been isolated as effective interventions. The conflict between science and clinical demand is painfully evident in our endeavor. Science, although inexorable, is a slow, painstaking process. The alacrity with which experimentally documented facts about marital therapy are produced does not come close to keeping pace with the information required by the practicing clinician in his/her everyday practice. It would be a wonderful world if counselors and therapists could postpone their interventions until the data were in. Unfortunately, they must proceed and, as the recent divorce statistics suggest, the demand for their services is irrepressible. Thus, this book has been written, replete with our beliefs and convictions about the subtleties of clinical work with couples.
