Do-It-Yourself Encounter

In quest of emotional closeness, the couple took off most of their clothes and listened respectfully to the voice coming from their record player: "Take turns listening to the insides of each other's stomachs," it counseled. The voice was that of Atlanta Psychiatrist Thomas P. Malone, developer of "the Marriage Enrichment Program," a sensitivity-training course designed for the use of a couple in the privacy of their home.

Malone's do-it-yourself encounter kit, which has just been put on the market for $29.95, consists of three LPs, five lesson plans and two workbooks--one for the husband, the other for the wife, It also includes two "feeling self mosaics" --jigsawed figures of a man and a woman divided into pieces labeled "ashamed," "anxious," "joyous," or just plain "sexual."

Destructive Criticism. For the course, Malone has created a number of "exercises" in which these materials are used to help couples "listen to their feelings" and examine them freely (and perhaps therapeutically) together. In one, the husband commands and his wife obeys--even when ordered to "kiss your knees," "roll over" and "tell me how grateful you are for being my wife." In another, each partner is advised to write on separate slips "a true secret that you have never told the other person" and "two fictitious secrets that you make up." The slips are then exchanged and discussed. Each exercise is designed to evoke strong feelings, which the husband and wife are then instructed to express and discuss.

To help couples learn the difference between anger (legitimate emotion over real grievances) and hostility (harmful feelings intended to hurt), the program leads the husband and wife into comparing their partners with other people; it suggests saying, for example, "This other person cooks better than you," or "This other person is more courteous than you." Such destructive criticism helps couples to learn that hostility separates people. On the other hand, anger is rewarded in Malone's course because it can actually draw people closer. Husband and wife are counseled, each in his private workbook, to buy a gift in secret and present it after the other "first allows himself to be openly angry with you instead of hostile." For reasons that are not explained, the gift is to be given at 3 a.m. on the morning after anger is displayed--a time seemingly calculated to produce even greater anger.

Misusing Openness. Whether Dr. Malone's package enriches or not remains to be seen. One couple who tried it out felt at first like victims of "an expensive put-on," but later were "drawn into a freewheeling discussion of problems we had glossed over in the past." Some psychiatrists suggest that the program may release emotions that partners cannot handle. To help minimize this possibility, Malone warns against too much sharing of emotions and especially against misusing openness as a guise for hostility. He also suggests the course for stable couples only--though such couples would seem the least likely customers for it.

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