Customer Reviews

Essentials of Premarital Counseling: Creating Compatible Couples (New Horizons in Therapy)

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We all know that a large percentage of American marriages end in divorce. These numbers are even higher for subsequent marriages. No one gets married planning to have it fail. However, many couples put more emphasis on planning the wedding than they do on planning the actual marriage. As a Therapist, you have a wonderful opportunity to assist couples in learning how to make the marriage work after the actual wedding ceremony and honeymoon end. Dr. Sandra Ceren has put together a remarkably easy to follow and understand counseling blueprint for couples considering marriage.

Real life case studies and examples will lead the therapist through a series of ten meetings and discussions with couples. Using her ideas and proven methods, the therapist can assist couples in finding areas of probable conflict, work through them, and emerge a stronger team after counseling sessions.

Dr. Ceren combines education and experence to assist couples in the "art of gracious compromise", lessons that would serve most of us in both our personal and professional relationships. The author writes frankly and honestly about the need to actually know a partner before marriage, and offers quizzes that can help your clients explore each other's personality, personal history and thought processes.

I found the entire book well written, excellently presented and very well organized. It's obvious Dr. Ceren has put much work into this guide. I firmly believe that any therapist hoping to include marital/premarital counseling in their practice should keep a copy of this book close by........it will be referred to again and again.

Dr. Ceren shares her interactive quizzes, techniques, and roleplaying scenarios proven to produce results in four decades of counseling premarital couples of all ages. You can't go wrong with the right tools!

Drawing upon 40 years of experience working with couples, Dr. Ceren presents a practical therapy package that clinicians can use "as is" or tailor to their practice needs. Essential tools include personality and relationship quizzes, role-plays and case studies. Successful and toxic marriages are profiled, e.g., the crazy-maker borderline, the paranoid personality. Conflict-provoking situations are described along with recommended solutions. This book is highly recommended and provides an excellent option for anyone who wishes to offer services outside of the insurance system.

I had hoped to use the book as a factor in a pre-marital counseling group situation, but it's mostly a list of questions couples could discuss pre-marriage along with pretty simple comments on them. Has the feel of a pop psychology media host rather than a therapist. (As a therapist, I was looking for the latter.)

I am a Christian pastor and work a lot with married couples, both in ministry and in counseling. As such, I have read quite a number of books on marital and pre-marital counseling. I have to say that Ceren's volume is undoubtedly the worst text I have read on the subject. It is not that there is nothing of value in it, but what insights or suggestions to be found that are of value -- and they are too few and too far between -- are not in the least unique. That is to say, they've probably occurred to you by way of common sense, your own experience and/-or you've already heard them or could hear them in a more well-written, interesting and useful book on relationship counseling. I certainly can't speak to Ceren's capabilities regarding live-and-in-person counseling with couples; hopefully she is very competent face-to-face. But I can confidently assert that she was incapable of transmitting well whatever skills she might employ in her office to the printed word.

It is commendable to make use of resources to improve one's ability to help improve or rescue marriages, but the best recommendation I could give to this text is the old adage 'It's better than nothing' -- but only just so. I don't think that we all need to be experts in order to intervene in a bad marriage (though some problems such as addictions or abuse compel seeking professional assistance) but we do need to take such an important task seriously since so much depends upon a successful outcome (though, in the end, a counselor can only do so much -- the rest is up to the couple).

From my self-equipping in this area I'd recommend Eggerichs's Love & Respect and Young's Ten Commandments of Marriage. And for a focus on financial issues which so often plague marriages, the Neumans' In Good Times and Bad. Another secondary source that is sometimes helpful is Chapman's The Five Love Languages. For sexual intimacy issues, take a look at Leman's Sheet Music. Admittedly, as you may have guessed, these are all written by Christian authors and while I believe that there is a lot to be said for having God and Christian principles in a marriage, I know not everyone shares my convictions. However, I think that if you give these texts a try you'll find that most of the principles apply even if the counselor and/or counseled are not believers.