Are goals and topics influenced by gender and modality in the initial marriage and family therapy session?

Establishment of a goal is crucial to therapy, but identification of therapeutic goals may be difficult in conjoint therapy because each participant may identify a different problem. We examined the influence of gender on ability to successfully introduce therapeutic topics in marital and family therapy by conducting two studies. The first study evaluates the ability of therapists to identify therapeutic goals that matched goals prioritized by both women and men clients on pretherapy questionnaires. The second study examines the process of initial therapy sessions to see whether gender influences a client's ability to introduce a therapeutic topic. Results suggest that therapeutic topic is influenced by the interaction of gender and treatment modality. Specifically, therapists were better able to match women's pretherapy stated goals in marital therapy than family therapy, men were more successful at introducing topics in family therapy, and women were more successful at introducing topics in marital therapy.