Effective Marriage Counseling: The His Needs, Her Needs Guide to Helping Couples

Dr. Willard Harley Jr. has brought his program of marriage counseling all together in his book, EFFECTIVE MARRIAGE COUNSELING. If you are familiar with Dr. Harley's work, this book ties together everything learned from his previous books, Love Busters, His Needs Her Needs, and Five Steps to Romantic Love. The one rub here is, for the counseling to be effective, both counselor and counselees will also need to read Harley's previous books. I mention that only because it can be quite off-putting to be half way through a book only to learn the information contained is worthless without further study. That's not really the case here. A counselor could come away with usable advice that could be implemented into any current counseling program, but to fully integrate Dr. Harley's methods will take a more diligent approach by both the counselor and the couple being counseled. The approach here revolves around creating new behaviors. Although Harley's is a somewhat unconventional approach, and at times his system has somewhat of a text-bookish feel to it, I believe most readers will also see the merit of the system and potential for a very high success rate. After the plan is laid out, Dr. Harley also includes a case study of Amy and Jack and detail the exact treatment of their issues. I would have liked to have seen a few more case studies included, but the reader does get a good feel for the approach taken and can easily see the effective results. The program implements a variety of assorted worksheets which are available to download online. For me personally, the majority of my counseling is pre-marital, but nonetheless, I certainly see the merit of this system and will be researching Harley's other books to further implement some of his program into my work.