Package and the Baggage

This is a book about and for couples, a guide to ways of achieving successful coupling. Implicit in its presentation is the notion that a happy couple is the best foundation for a happy family. It is written with two overlapping audiences in mind. The primary audience consists of couples who are interested in examining and perhaps relieving difficulties in their relationships, whether or not they are considering therapy. The secondary audience is the growing cohort of mental health professionals who work with troubled couples. The Package and the Baggage occupies a middle ground between pop-psych lingo that aims for a lowest common denominator on the one hand and academic/professional discourse (with its inevitable reliance on jargon and doctrinaire methodology/modality) on the other.Understanding the differences between the “package” and “baggage” are central and vital to a couple's ability to achieve stability, success, and fulfillment. The book examines specific issues, identifying characteristic problems that weaken couples' relationships and presenting: principles that may be applied to address the problems exercises that may be undertaken as aids to solution communication (i.e., listening and hearing, as well as verbalizing) the “business of marriage” the “exchange of favors” the risks of turning partners into parents or children the concept of mutual independence. Descriptions, narratives, and dialogue derived from cases and clients provide the necessary fleshing out of the skeletal principles that structure the book's argument. No viable guide could work without them. Quoted dialogue heightens the sense of reality of what goes on in therapy.Finally, a word about the cartoons that accompany the text. Humor is a valuable weapon in the arsenal of human defense against life's assaults. The cartoon are offered with three goals in mind: to illustrate particular points to suggest to people who see something of themselves in these points that they may benefit from the emotional luxury of laughing at themselves to let readers find some comfort in the fact that they are rarely alone, that their own particular problems are probably shared as common human experience—or else they could not be subjected to a humorous treatment.