a type of family therapy that involves both husband and wife and focuses on the marital relationship as it affects the individual personalities, behaviors, and psychopathologies of the partners; the rationale for this method is the assumption that emotional or psychopathologic processes within the family structure and in the social matrix of the marriage perpetuate individual pathologic personality structures, which find expression in the disturbed marriage and are aggravated by the feedback between partners. SYN: marital therapy.