Role Theory and Marriage Counseling

T HIS paper is motivated by the conviction that current marriage and family counseling is a social practice in need of a guiding theory. Such a theory is needed to give to counseling a more scientific orientation and to aid its advancement toward a more certain status as a profession. The paper is further stimulated by the belief that role theory, in its most recent developments, provides a potentially useful approach to marriage counseling practice. It is also believed that this body of theory about human conduct offers a fruitful source for the derivation of hypotheses for research related to counseling practice. The subject of theory and practice in marriage counseling is highly important at this time for several reasons. In the first place, there is a widely recognized need for a coherent set of general principles to provide bases for explaining observed facts related to marriage and family counseling. A set of valid generalizations would serve as a guide to action and to significant research. If this branch of counseling is to become a profession, its practitioners should be able to operate within a common conceptual frame of reference. Only when such commonality is achieved will workers in this area be able to communicate effectively with one another and to establish comparable training programs for counselors. Theory for counseling is significant not only for the professional counselor but for the client and for the public as well. Marriage counseling has been widely publicized in textbooks in marriage and family living and in popular and semi-popular literature in this area. In these writings counseling is generally proposed as a major program for the conservation and development of family life in times of major social change. It behooves the students of American family life to begin making good on the proposals they have suggested. Currently American society is undergoing unprecedented degrees of social change and transition centering around mobility and urbanization. These changes are exerting tremendous impacts on patterns of marriage and the family.' Frequently their effects introduce severe difficulties into marriage and family circles. They are often devastating in their impacts. More and more troubled people may be expected to seek the services of those who claim professional competence in marriage and family counseling. Those who counsel will need to explain to their clients and to the public as well as to their professional colleagues what they are doing and why. The rationale for practice is made communicable on the basis of clearly stated definitions, concepts, and principles that make sense to all concerned. Finally, a valid theoretical approach to marriage counseling is needed to answer a current criticism. A negative evaluation is stated by those who observe that some who practice marriage counseling do so without benefit of a coherent theory of personality to serve as a basis for their activities. Much marriage counseling is practiced as a common-sense, rule-of-thumb undertaking. A factbound, and blindly empirical approach leaves the practitioner and his clients without any central hypotheses to unify and give meaning to the procedures used. It seems obvious then that there exists a need for a valid body of systematic concepts and principles to provide a solid foundation for counseling those who are troubled with unsolved interpersonal problems. Role theory is believed to be particularly relevant to practice in this area. This theory conceptualizes human behavior in terms of group life and group participation. Marriage and family problems for which counseling is indicated are interpersonal or group problems. They arise from what goes on between persons rather than what goes on exclusively within their separate skins. Such interpersonal processes may be described rather clearly in terms of the interplay of social roles. The discussion which follows is offered as a summarization of the central tenets of role theory which seem pertinent to marriage counseling practice.