Comparison of the Effectiveness of Schema Therapy (ST) and Transactional Analysis (TA) in Reducing Marital Conflict of Couples Seeking a Divorce

Abstract

Aim: This study was performed to compare the effectiveness of schema therapy (ST) and transactional analysis (TA) in marital conflict of couples seeking a divorce. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design with a control group and a two-month follow-up. The statistical population included all married people with marital conflict in Rasht in the second half of 2018 who referred to counseling centers, dispute settlement councils, and family courts, from which 40 people were selected by convenient sampling and randomly assigned to the ST experimental group (n = 15), the TA experimental group (n = 15), and the control group (n =15). The ST experimental group received the training package intervention of Yang et al. (2003), and the TA experimental group received the therapy package intervention of Stewart (2016) for twelve one-hour sessions. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA. Results: The results indicated that ST and TA affected marital conflict (F = 125.23, P = 0.001) and that this effect was stable during the follow-up phase. The results of the Scheffé posthoc test suggested that there was a significant difference between TA and ST in terms of effectiveness in reducing marital conflicts (P = 0.05). Accordingly, TA had a greater effect on the reduction of marital conflicts among the participants. Conclusion: According to the results, trained therapists are recommended to teach psychological treatment programs such as schema-oriented couple therapy and TA in the form of weekly programs to improve the level of marital satisfaction of couples.