MARRIAGE COUNSELLING 215 



ence that no city has anything like sufficient facilities of this sort. Further 

 development of facilities and education of young people along these lines 

 represent important constructive measures for the prevention of family 

 maladjustment in the future. 



(4) COOPERATION 



While failure on the part of married people to cooperate with each other 

 is, in general, a symptom rather than a cause of difficulty, it is yet a heading 

 that involves much of the practical treatment of a case. It is often useful 

 to ask the client to make a list of the ten most important points which he 

 or she has to complain about, arranging them in order of importance. It is 

 surprising to find in how many cases the individual runs out of ideas after 

 listing three or four. To draw out a more systematic picture of the problem, 

 as seen by the partner who is being interviewed, we have found the marital 

 rating scale of Jessie Bernard helpful. This is effectively supplemented 

 in our practice by the use of the Bernreuter Personality adjustment scale 

 which enables the individual to give a picture of himself that is easily scored, 

 in relation to others of his own sex, age, and educational level. 



There must be in the first place sufficient intelligence to cooperate, and 

 this sometimes requires the use of the Binet test before one can proceed 

 with confidence. Temperamental difficulties such as jealousy, nagging, and 

 lack of punctuality are difficult to eradicate and may have to be circum- 

 vented by the development of changed attitudes toward them in the partner. 

 It goes without saying that no treatment is likely to make over altogether 

 an individual's personality; but if two married people have no serious basis 

 for antagonism and have a real desire to cooperate, they can in most cases 

 adjust themselves to the presence of trivial sources of annoyance. Serious 

 temperamental and emotional defects verging on mental disease may be 

 more recognizable, and in some cases even necessary ground for divorce. 



Where there are children, the failure of parents to agree in the management 

 of these is one of the most widespread sources of conflict in our experience. 

 In many cases the mother has attended child-study groups and done some 

 reading of modern literature so that she has definite ideas as to how the 

 children should be handled. The father has not had such opportunities, or 

 has not taken advantage of them. He is therefore inclined to despise 

 these "new-fangled ideas" and to point to the way he himself was brought 

 up as the most successful instance of child rearing known to him, with the 

 assertion that if his own children are reared in the same way, nothing more 

 can be desired. Education of the father is frequently necessary before this 

 source of difficulty, with its inevitable damage to the children as well as to 



