The Effects of Management of Tactical Defenses in Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy on Couple’s Satisfaction

Introduction: Tactical defenses as defenses that have interpersonal essence can prevent the intimacy and emotional closeness in couple’s relationships. The purpose of present study was to determine the effect of management of tactical defenses in intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy in order to increase couple’s satisfaction.
Method: The present study was administered with a quasi- experimental design in the centers of psychology and counseling in Tehran. Participants were 16 couples (n=32) who referred to these centers. They were assigned in two groups of experimental and control, randomly. Marital satisfaction questionnaire was completed by participants in two stages, before and one week after the intervention.
Results: Results showed that couples of experimental group in marital satisfaction ( = .32), personality problems ( = .46), financial management ( =.29), leisure time ( =.26), sexual relationships ( =.52), children and child rearing ( = .12), family and friends ( = .59) and equivalent roles ( =.5) were superior than couples of control group, but scores of ideal distortion, relation, conflict solving and religious orientation were not significant in two groups.
Conclusion: Intervention treatments in tactical defenses, based on the intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy, can be useful for increasing the marital satisfaction