[The marriage therapist is a Trojan horse: reflections inspired by the results of research on interventions with couples].

Communication training and positive exchange training are the two methods for improving marital relations that research has established as being the most effective. However, even after conducting therapy involving both partners based on these methods, too few couples (35%) succeed in reaching the same level of satisfaction as couples who are already satisfied with their relationship. The efforts that have been undertaken to increase this rate have focused mainly on developing new therapeutic techniques that include cognitive, emotional and systemic approaches. However, the results of experimental studies to date do not prove the superiority of these new approaches. Given this situation, it is time to pay more attention to particular characteristics of the therapeutic relation in marital therapy and to the means of obtaining the collaboration of the two spouses. As is the opinion of certain authors, the most difficult clinical task does not consist of finding what the clients must do to solve their problems, but rather to determine how to motivate them and help them achieve their goal. An analysis of this task, based on clinical observations and results of recent research in this area, has allowed the authors to present a number of hypotheses about ways to reinforce the therapeutic alliance and eventually reduce the failure rate of marital therapy.