The Diagnosis and Treatment of Marital Conflicts: A Panel Discussion: The Diagnosis of Marital Conflicts

In A Panel Discussion on “The Diagnosis and Treatment of Marital Conflicts,” one has to decide how to utilize the relatively short time allotted to each discussant. There was agreement among my colleagues to limit ourselves, more or less, to a special area, and I am privileged to discuss the Diagnosis of Marital Conflicts. Much has been said and written on this subject by psychiatrists and non-psychiatrists.¹ Nevertheless, when we, the panelists, decided to take up the topic, we did so hoping to add something new that will be valuable to those who are professionally involved in marriage counseling, but also to those who personally, directly or indirectly, may benefit from our discussions.

My own contribution will be devoted to Karen Horney's theories; I shall try to show how Horney's concepts can be fruitfully applied to the understanding of marital conflicts. With the title of her book, Our Inner Conflicts, ² she has already expressed by implication that one has to differentiate between outer and inner conflicts. While outer conflicts do not necessarily belong to the realm of the psychiatrist, inner conflicts do. There are inner, but normal conflicts where there is an awareness of wishes and feelings and willingness and ability to make a choice. Most of the inner conflicts one observes in marital counseling are, however, not normal but neurotic conflicts. They do not exist in one of the marital partners only, but more frequently than not, to some lesser or greater degree, in both.

Experience shows that usually the inner conflicts which interfere with a healthy mutuality in a marriage are hidden behind one or many façade conflicts³ which are sufficiently strong to prevent the marital partners from awareness of the existence of anything deeper that hight be wrong; at best one or the other sees or senses the splinter in the other's eyes without realizing the beams in his own. I leave it to the imagination of the listener to ponder over what the façade conflicts may be;