Rethinking Marriage

Christopher Clulow, PhD, is a Senior Fellow of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, London, where he works as a visiting lecturer and researcher. He has published extensively on marriage, partnerships, parenthood and couple psychotherapy, most recently from an attachment perspective. He has a long history of contributing to thinking about the processes involved in ending relationships, and his most recent work has involved heading up a project identifying competences for treating depression through couple therapy under the Department of Health's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative. He has also recently consulted to and evaluated interventions provided by a mental health agency to reduce depression in parents of young children. He is a founding member and past Deputy Chair of the British Society of Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors and a member of the editorial board for the journal 'Couple and Family Psychoanalysis'.

'A thought provoking collection of articles which will succeed at encouraging the reader to rethink marriage.'- Windy Dryden'This is a splendid book. It brings together the perspectives of psychoanalytic object relations theory and the clinical expertise with those of sociology, history and theology to examine contemporary marriage. Seen through this multi-coloured lens, the observations and analysis of marriage as an intensely personal relationship, are consistently thoughtful and often brilliant and original in their conceptualization. An important contribution to understanding the complex changes in ourselves and our society that should be widely read.'- Judith S. Wallerstein, Ph.D.'I greatly enjoyed this stimulating and thought-provoking collection essays, surveying as they do recent developments in marriage and the treatment of marital problems, illuminating these against the background of changes in the social structure, in religious observance and interest in spiritual concerns, in ethical, moral and legal issues, and in relations between the sexes brought about by feminism. Despite this great range of vision, skillful editing has helped to give the book coherence and unity, as well as ensuring its readability. It should interest all those concerned with marriage and the family, and I recommend it highly.'- Robin Skynner

• Foreword -- Prologue -- Rethinking marriage -- Learning from divorce -- Public perceptions: private experiences -- Theological images of marriage -- Fidelity as a moral achievement -- Sexuality and the couple -- Women, men, and intimacy -- "Good-enough" marriage