Patterns Of Infidelity And Their Treatment (Frontiers in Couple and Family Therapy, No 3) [Hardcover]

Emily M. Brown (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0876306318 | ISBN-13: 978-0876306314 | Publication Date: January 15, 1991

This volume provides therapists with a systematic framework for evaluating and treating patients involved in extramarital affairs. Using case examples, the author examines affairs as expressions of fear, disappointment, anger, emptiness, or need for love and acceptance. The first section of the book identifies five "patterns of infidelity", in which the affair reflects the unfaithful partner's dysfunctional pattern of relating to his or her spouse. The second section describes therapeutic strategies for each type of affair and addresses key issues such as managing the crisis; hiding, telling, or getting caught; the unmarried other; group treatment; trust, forgiveness, and closure; divorce; and the impact of affairs on children. The author emphasizes her belief that honesty between the marriage partners is essential to resolution of the conflict underlying the infidelity. The final section discusses the ways in which the therapist's own experience with love and betrayal can affect the therapeutic process.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Written both for therapists and general readers, this book considers the causes and consequences of affairs, and considers the use of treatment for those involved.."
-SciTech Book News, March 2002
--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Emily M. Brown, MSW, LCSW, is Director of the Key Bridge Therapy and Mediation Center in Arlington, Virginia. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (January 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876306318
• ISBN-13: 978-0876306314
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,411,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars ill informed author, June 27, 2006

By 

Lian Taylor "Girls Gone Reading" (Fort Worth, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Patterns Of Infidelity And Their Treatment (Hardcover)

As a Marriage and Family Therapist and nearing completion of my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, I found Ms Brown's book to be both baseless and ill conceived.

The idea that one has an affair due to a deficit in one's marriage is lacking in informed judgement on her part.

I got my Masters and became a therapist to understand my role (as I saw it) in the breakdown of my relationship with my ex. He was chronically unfaithful and the marriage finally ended when he impregnated a woman he was seeing.

I had a therapist like Ms Brown- who believed that his infidelities were due to something 'missing' from the marriage. I disagreed. I felt his infidelities were due to a general lack of moral character and maturity on his part, as well as his familial opinion that affairs were fine (he came from a family where this was acceptable- his grandfather had two families!)

Once I came to understand that I could not have 'changed him' or done any more in the marriage to keep him faithful, I became a stronger person and was able to open myself up (or heal, so to speak) and find a wonderful, emotionally and morally healthy man- who I've been happily married to for over 5 years.

In my practice, I try to help the betrayer recognize and accept responsiblity for his/her actions, as well as helping the betrayed understand that this situation didn't evolve from a strained marriage, but from the informed actions of their spouse- and that any decisions regarding the future of their relationship should reflect that treatise. Ultimately, if the betrayer doesn't accept TRUTHFUL responsiblity for their actions, they can't/won't stop cheating (they will only get better at concealing it).

Ms Brown wants us to believe that if a man/woman cheats- it's because the spouse is lacking. This theory is both damaging to the betrayed's psyche and damaging to the marriage itself.

The book, "My Husband's Affair Became The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me" by Anne Bercht and the book " Infidelity: A Survival Guide" by Don David Lusterman are better at dealing with this sensitive subject. Both Ms Bercht and Mr Lusterman explain that the betrayer has to be held accountable for his/her actions in order for a resolution to the problem of infidelity in a marriage or relationship.

56 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Baseless and ill-advised, May 21, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Patterns Of Infidelity And Their Treatment (Hardcover)

This book depends on a premise that lacks any empirical support and makes no theoretical sense: That affairs are functions of the marriages in which they occur.

That an affair has occurred obviously means that the marriage was vulnerable to an affair--that the pattern of marital interaction allowed for an affair to happen. That does not imply that the affair is a function of that pattern.

Here's a plain fact: There simply is no decent research showing Ms. Brown's premise. None. It simply does not exist. And it can't: the idea is untestable, for at least two reasons.

First, it is unfalsifiable. You can always find a way to believe it if you want to. In every marriage, as in every human relationship, there are always conflicts and disappointments, and if you want to assert that some of them caused a certain behavior, you can always do so. Like the idea that everything is God's will, the idea lacks any proof in its behalf, but people who believe it can always deploy it to interpret events.

Second, the idea is a poorly formed hypothesis in the first place. The unfortunate notion that affairs reflect the state of the marriage in which they occur is part of a shibboleth of marriage and family therapists, called "systems" theory. However, nothing in general systems theory, as understood outside M&F counseling, would suggest that a family is a system in the sense necessary for the theory to apply: No marriage or family is sufficiently isolated to allow the systemic dynamics, such as they are, to determine the behavior of the components--namely, the family members.

Every person is part of many systems--his or her extended family, work colleagues, friends, social strata, local community, larger society, and so forth--all of which have something to do with determining behavior, insofar as systems theory has any applicability to human behavior at all.

So the very idea that family dynamics even COULD cause an afffair rests on an indefensible idea. You simply cannot isolate a family well enough ever to create a test for the hypothesis--and no one outside M&F therapy would ever think you could, since a family so obviously does not fit the initial conditions necessary for applying the theory.

Ms. Brown's typology of affairs is likewise lacking in empirical testing. There simply is no research validating that these are the types of affairs. And it is ridiculously easy to show that the types of affairs she countenances do not encompass all the reasons affairs take place.

Sometimes a spouse is mentally ill, for instance. Sometimes a spouse's early upbringing left him or her with serious ethical lacunae. Sometimes we just marry the wrong people, because we are young and naive or otherwise obtuse when marrying, and the person we marry chooses a dishonorable path. Sometimes we choose dishonorable ways of feeling better because of our own shortcomings. None of those are functions of the marriage.

And sometimes an affair reflects the simple facts that affairs are fun and people believe they can get away with them. The well-known "Coolidge effect," that (for the most part) sexual excitement increases with new partners, is one reason for affairs, and it is part of basic psychology, not a reflection of the marriage.

If you try to fit your spouse's infidelity, or your own, into Ms. Brown's views, you may be taking on responsibility for managing someone else's mental illness or moral shortcomings, or you may be shifting your mental illness or ethical immaturity to your marriage, where they can never be fixed.

Nothing ever makes an individual trustworthy except his or her own good character. An affair need not show anything wrong with the marriage, but it ALWAYS shows unreliable character--a person who does not keep promises and engages in deceit is (by definition)unreliable. If you are the betrayer, you will never become a reliable partner without reforming the moral callousness that enabled you to use betrayal to make yourself feel better. If you are the betrayed, you make a serious mistake in believing that anything you can do will make your partner more reliable. Yes, you might be able to decrease the partner's unhappiness; but then you will have taken responsibility for keeping the partner happy enough that he or she won't do what they should never be willing to do anyway.

In my many years as a therapist in New York, I've seen marriages destroyed by well-meaning but muddle-headed therapists who convince partners that something is wrong with the marriage, when there isn't, really--when some individual therapy or moral education for the betrayer could have saved the marriage. I've seen therapists ratify the betrayed person's broken sense of self by telling them they had a role in bringing it on themselves, thus forever warping their understanding of themselves and of the moral demands of marriage.

And I've seen people spend years and thousands of dollars in therapy chasing down mythical "system dynamics" that there is no sound reason to believe exist at all.

Ms. Brown invites more of the same.

All in the name of dogma that lack empirical support and make no theoretical sense.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential resource for knowledgable professionals, January 3, 2010

By 

Isolina Ricci (CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Patterns Of Infidelity And Their Treatment (Hardcover)

Patterns of Infidelity and Their Treatment is an essential resource for knowledgable professionals. It's comprehensive, detailed, and thorough and I have found it very useful in my clinical and mediation practice. It is at the top of my recommended reading list for professionals on affairs. Isolina Ricci, Ph.D.