Marital power discrepancies and symptom development in spouses: An empirical investigation

This study investigates the well-accepted, yet empirically unsubstantiated hypothesis proposed by structural/strategic therapists and so-ciobehavioral clinicians alike that the less powerful spouse in an unhappy marriage will be the one most likely to develop a psychiatric symptom. The symptom then can be used by the less powerful spouse to bring about a more equitable balance of power in the couple's exchange system. Eighty-four percent of the couples who identified one member of the dyad as being symptomatic conformed to this hypo-thetically predicted power distribution. These findings lend some initial empirical support to this hypothesis. In marriages where both spouses were symptomatic, power was shared equally between the partners. The same egalitarian power sharing was evident in five of six married couples where neither spouse reported being symptomatic. Symptoms of spouses who were in equal power-sharing relationships with their partners, were found to be of a different type (conceptually) than those symptoms that characterized spouses in unequal power marriages.