The Marriage Authority

What makes Family Dynamics' courses different from other marriage courses?

One primary reason is that our courses do much more than educate. We designed our courses to be marital psychoeducation. Below you will find a clear, basic explanation of psychoeducation and what it does when used correctly in teaching, mentoring, and facilitating processes.

What's the difference in education and psychoeducation?

Most seminars, courses, and lectures about marriage are excellent educational tools. They primarily base themselves on a cognitive approach to learning and solving problems. (Cognition is the process of receiving, processing, storing, and using information. That means acquiring, remembering, and applying knowledge.) Therefore, their usual approach is to have people gain information from an expert speaking either in person or on videocassette. To increase levels of learning, sometimes these courses involve couples in interactive discussions or have them work through a book or workbook. These are all good and valued methods of education and we applaud them.

However, we do something more. Instead of just educating couples, we psychoeducate.

So what does that mean?

Psychoeducation adds an affective dimension to cognitive learning. That fancy talk means that rather than just teaching the mind, we also educate emotions. Emotions play key roles in our drives, decisions, and actions. To develop mature, loving, godly relationships we must be able understand what we feel, as well as what the other person feels, so that we can learn to live together in harmony. That gives us the ability to act rather than react, to make the right decisions, and do the right things even when it is unnatural because our emotions have been trained.

All this requires more than just knowledge. It requires growing within our own hearts and souls, and then reaching out to the heart, mind, and soul of our mate. That's why education--imparting knowledge--as helpful as it is, isn't enough. To change, grow, mature, and develop, we are better served by a process of psychoeducation that educates both the mind and the heart (The intellect and the emotion). The human and the spiritual dimensions of our being.

Dr. Jim O'Neil of the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut said this about the process of psychoeducation, "With psychoeducation, feelings and emotions have equal weight with conceptual and factual knowledge. Emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998) and academic knowledge are true partners in the psychoeducational process. With the psychoeducational approach, students both think and feel in the classroom."

When Joe Beam founded Family Dynamics in 1994, he developed FDI's programs using the best material from world-renowned family researchers and educators. However, Joe wanted to do more than just educate couples. He wanted to change the way they live and love so that their marriages would be all that God wants them to be. To do this, Joe developed a form of marital psychoeducation that combines a solid knowledge of Scripture with essential knowledge about marriage relationships, human behavior, group dynamics, unique educational methods, and psychology. This system does more than educate the mind; it touches the heart and the soul to create true spiritual growth and an amazing increase in love. In our courses, we create an environment in which relationships--including strained relationships--grow rapidly and, if need be, heal.

Some people have called us love doctors. We've shown that people can be in love--deeply in love--with each other no matter what has happened to their relationship and no matter what they feel about each other right now. We do more than tell people what will work. We help them deal with the emotions and feelings that are keys to overcoming the past and building a future together.

How does that translate into what happens in a course or seminar?

In psychoeducation, a crucial aspect is making a completely safe environment for sharing thoughts and feelings openly. We thoroughly train facilitator couples to create and maintain that environment. The facilitators invite each person to participate in the course both intellectually and emotionally at their optimal comfort level. As Dr. O'Neil says, "The option of intellectual and emotional processing is presented to students as a free choice. There are no judgments about these choices, but encouragement is given to take risks and explore new dimensions of self." To promote these growth steps, we train facilitators to be real, open, and honest in their sharing with the group they lead. Again, quoting O'Neil, "By connecting the class dynamics to the course content, the concepts can come to life for students, sometimes right before their very eyes."

An Example

Perhaps we can illustrate how we do this for couples in our course via one section of our popular Dynamic Marriage course. We call this section Love Busters because it helps couples identify the things they do that hurt their spouses. First, we teach what Love Busters are and how they affect people. (Cognitive learning-typical educational process.) That educational dimension is very important. People need to learn what shouldn't be done and what should be done. They need to know what God thinks. They also learn when they hear the best principles of marriage research. But as we've already said, we go to a next step that makes the educational dimension so much more effective.

After educating the couple, we begin the first step of affective (emotional) learning. During a time of "homework" before coming to class, each person through thinking, remembering, reliving, and writing explores his or her pain that has come from any Love Busters the spouse continually practices. Carefully and kindly, each shares with the other those hurts. As each understands not only the factual dimensions of their hurtful behavior, but also the emotional affect on themselves and their spouses, emotional education takes place. (Affective learning.)

As powerful as each homework discovery and sharing session is, our class structure makes it even stronger. In our next step of the psychoeducational process, couples hear their facilitators talk openly and honestly in class about their pains, their new awareness, and the positive effect that came from removing Love Busters from their marriage. Then comes a powerful next step. Through a unique classroom methodology that we have perfected, class members have opportunity to open up in a very safe, protected situation that allows them to continue their personal introspection, as well as their own factual and emotional learning. The result is extremely effective. The concepts really do come alive for most students. As that occurs, that person actually changes his or her actions towards the spouse. The change isn't driven by only knowing a better way. It's driven by the individual's own spiritual and moral values to create a better life for his or her spouse.

That typically doesn't happen just by hearing a speaker, being part of an interactive discussion, or completing exercises in a workbook. However, it happens regularly in our Dynamic Marriage course.

That's the value of marital psychoeducation.

Don't be misled to think that a course or class is marital psychoeducation just because someone may occasionally become emotional during the class. Moreover, don't think that a changed life here or there indicates a psychoeducational experience. God works in many ways and we see His handiwork in many settings, including the traditional knowledge-sharing marriage class. Yet we are convinced that through psychoeducation, many more people grow much more rapidly and the needed changes they make to their lives are more long lasting.

Why?

We design every homework session and classroom experience to effectively reach the whole person - mind, heart, and spirit. Does it always work with every person? No. But it does work for so many more people and in so much greater measure than typical educational processes.

If you would like to see for yourself, please enroll in one of our Facilitator Training seminars and make your own evaluation of how effective this approach to helping couples really is.

Just call us at 1-800-650-9995 to learn more or to enroll.

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