Treating the Doll's House Marriage |
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| Authors: | FRANK S. PITTMAN III KALMAN FLOMENHAFT |
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| Affiliation: | Director of Psychiatric Services, Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia.;Doctorate Student in Social Work, Denver University, Denver, Colorado. This work was supported in part by NIMH grant # 1577. The authors wish to express appreciation to their colleagues in the Family Treatment Unit, from which this paper emerged. These included Dr. Donald G. Langsley, Dr. David Kaplan, Dr. Pavel Machotka, and Miss Carol DeYoung. Dr. Alfred A. Messer, Emory University, Atlanta, also provided many helpful suggestions. |
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| Abstract: | The Doll's House, a common pitfall for family therapists, is an extremely unequal relationship in which one spouse's incompetence is required or encouraged by the other. This pattern of marriage is common in a sick population and is chosen by people with clear individual pathology. It may be stable and satisfying, but it is crisis prone. Doll's Houses are likely to be disrupted by the arrival of children, financial reverses, and, most important, the intrusion of another person upon whom the Doll is dependent and who sets out to equalize the marital relationship. A well-intentioned therapist with an intolerance for pathology can destroy the marriage. Therapy seems more successful when the therapist respects the basically unequal framework the couple has chosen and works toward greater understanding and respect for unique individual needs within that framework. |
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