Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage

Maggie is a tremendous writer and so respected in the field. This book is the book that I give to every couple who comes to me for therapy because why write the book twice when she already did it and so wonderfully well! For the record, everything she writes is on my bookshelf because Maggie cuts to the chase and helps us all to grow bigger and better. I'm grateful for everything she has taught me. Mary Jane Hurley Brant [...]

There are lots of books that address how external events such as illness or the loss of a loved one can affect one's marriage. This book explains in depth how patterns from your partner's family or your family of origin can impact your marriage without your even being aware of them. With the techniques Scarf describes it's possible to bring these to light and break the hold they have on your relationship. Not a really easy read but most definitely worth it. I have a copy but it's never on my bookshelf -- always loaned out!

Good stories of partners and their conflicts.... As I've seen when doing couples therapy, we do indeed tend to carry each other's unacknowledged "stuff"...which of course is part (not all!) of the initial attraction, the unconscious logic asking: who can give this back to me? Krishnamurti had a nice image: relationships as mirrors.

MS Scarf writes a captivating, engaging, book using real life (they feel quite real) couples to illustrate many of the relationship dynamics she explains. The center piece of Intimate Partners is the examination and application of the notion of projective identification. This notion is common in the psychological discussions under different names. MS Scarf introduces the notion clearly. Other notions she uses are family of origin implications and genograms. The book heavily relies on acceptance of general psychological theories. This is not an easy read. It is worthwhile, valuable, contimplative and, most of all, useful in the context of daily life. If you are looking for spoonfed, formula solutions go somewhere else.

This book changed my life and the way that I look at my marriage. Scarf summarizes family therapy, but she does it with so much life that it's as riveting as a soap opera. Reading this book, I had dozens of "aha" moments when I finally recognized and understood what was going on in my marriage -- ahas that enabled me to break old destructive patterns