Marital Breakdown

by Jack Dominian

A marriage collapses. Psychology, sociology and medicine may say one thing; religion and law pronounce another. In this study, probably for the first time, a psychiatrist has made an unbiased attempt to bring together these different viewpoints. How do men and women select their partners? And what are the factors that break a marriage up -sex, money, housing, parents and families, mental illness, or the inability to give and take emotionally? Do such influences as age or premarital pregnancy count?

[...]Proceeding from the latest research, the author indicates the places where a deeper insight can help marriage counsellors and others to reconcile the parties and avoid breakdown. [...]

Contents

Preface

1. Contemporary marriage
2. The incidence and timing of marital breakdown
3. Choosing a partner: Social and religious factors
4. Choosing a ´partner: Intelligence
5. Choosing a partner: Parental image and personality needs
6. Dependency
7. Deprivation
8. Self-esteem
9. Psychopathy
10. Sexual difficulties
11. Sexual difficulties (continued)
12. Birth control and the size of the family
13. Psychiatric illness and the role of the psychiatrist
14. Outcome
15. Prevention
16. Reconciliation
17. The Law
18. Marital breakdown and the future

References
Index

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel]

Written almost fifty years ago as an overview on the subject of marital breakdown and drawing on the peculiarly British multidisciplinary effort to make the world a better place by focusing on improving the psychosocial dynamics of families, there is still much food for thought in this book.

Post-World War II Britain was very worried about increasing signs of social breakdown such as increasing rates of divorce, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and mental illness. The not quite impeccable logic leading from such questions to the study of marriages is probably best exemplified by this excerpt which is thoroughly steeped in the values of a welfare state:

Since the stability in a community is intimately connected with the welfare of the individual family unit, society has a triple responsibility regarding marriage. It has to provide a legal structure that safeguards life-long stability while making it possible for men and women to start afresh when their previous attempts have not succeeded. It needs to ensure that its citizens are protected as far as it is possible from contracting marriages whose survival is extremely hazardous. Finally, it must provide all possible help to assist marriages in difficulties. Prevention, reconciliation and an effective system for dissolution are society's three responsibilities.

The excerpt does not mention a word about protecting children from the broken or hazardous marriages of their parents, but in fairness to the author, I should add that he does go into this point in some detail in several chapters.

In order to study the "welfare of the family unit", the Family Discussion Bureau was set up in 1948 and later absorbed into the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. It set out to, in Dominian's words:

i. Provide a service for people seeking help with marriage problems.
ii. Devise techniques appropriate to such a service, and evolve a method of training caseworkers.
iii. Find out something about problems of inter-personal relationships as they reveal themselves in marital difficulties.

The Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce (1951-1955) produced a number of fascinating documents and recommendations, and the Tavistock Clinic's Marital Unit's established through the initiative of Dr. H. V. Dicks, pioneered an extraordinary alliance between social caseworkers and psychoanalysts which sought to better understand the tensions leading to marital breakdown through what would now probably be termed action-based research. The author actually put it this way:

Marital failure is the breakdown of a human relationship, an event before which societies have hitherto remained passive, perplexed and rather helpless witnesses. This is now beginning to change. The sciences of sociology and psychology are bringing this subject within the orbit of their research and already valuable insights are emerging which with the passage of time could lead to effective intervention, prophylactically and therapeutically. Such an approach begs the question whether intervention is desirable, but if the answer is in the affirmative and this appears to correspond to the view of Christian and humanist thinking, then we shall be turning to the sciences for the solution of an age-long baffling problem.

Most of the author's questions are still valid, as are his honest appraisals of the limitations of the research and the statistics mentioned. Although he quotes statistical studies to report on the rising levels of divorce or register the demand for marital counselling, as well as to explore the correlation between, say divorces and measurable attributes of the marriage (number of children, time married, premarital pregnancy) or its partners (education or IQ level of each partner, earnings, age at time of marriage), it is clear that statistics alone can not really get at root causes and thus can not lead to effective preventive or corrective measures. Psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, provided interesting hypotheses on possible root causes which, it was felt, could lead to effective therapeutic techniques which could eventually be taught to professional social caseworkers for wider application. Three early chapters of the book focus on choosing a partner. The first two chapters look at social (class) and religious factors, and intelligence, but the third chapter comes straight out of psychoanalysis: Parental image and personality needs. After all, if you are unconsciously choosing your marital partner in such a way as to reproduce your parents' relational shortcomings, your marriage will, in all probability, reproduce the same sort of shortcomings they had. The bulk of the book looks at different kinds of factors leading to marital breakdowns: those stemming from the dependency of one or both partners, those stemming from deprivation, problems of self-esteem, psychopathies, sexual difficulties and even the size of the family and psychiatric illnesses. It also looks at other related issues, such as the effect of marital breakdown on children.

In short, this is a relatively short introduction to a complex topic, written from an interesting and peculiarly British 1960s viewpoint. It is somewhat dated in places, and, to some readers, it may seem quaint or naive in its faith in Science. I liked it for its questions, its honesty, its struggling for scientific exactitude, its open multidisciplinary approach and its cautious optimism.