Word: bache
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Dirty and Clean. By his own estimate, Bach has survived a few thousand fights with his own wife of 28 years and observed at least 20,000 more between his patients. The experience has made him wary of what he calls "Virginia Woolf" fighters. At their worst, they specialize in the delights of "carom-fighting" (jabbing at a spouse by mocking his religion or his child by a former marriage), "hit and run" (saying "You made me lose my appetite" in the middle of dinner), and "psychoanalysis" ("Your childhood was more pathogenic than mine, you poor thing!"). Though less neurotic...
Except when partners are "severely alienated" or "deeply convinced that the other is mentally sick," Bach is certain that such passive and active hostilities provide man's rarest opportunities for forging real intimacy. "Authentic anger brings out truth," the authors write. "The pain of conflict is the price of true and enduring love. People simply cannot release all their love feelings unless they have learned to manage their hate." In group therapy with 250 pairs of pugilists, who paid $492.50 per couple for 13 "fight-training sessions" during the past six years, Bach has evolved a set of common...
...REQUEST A TIME AND PLACE with a phrase such as, "Hey, I've got a bone to pick with you." This avoids "Pearl Harbor" surprise attacks and makes the fight voluntary. To enforce persistence, Bach says, boats are ideal; they make it hard for either combatant to escape...
...FOUL!" when a blow lands below the emotional "belt line," a taboo region that each partner should reflectively set for himself. Vague as this sounds, Bach says that well-motivated couples do not fake belt lines in order to duck issues; they know overuse will give them the fresh problem of a credibility...
...maddening self-consciousness of Bach's techniques wears away, he and Wyden say, as couples master the art of intimate battle. "Our system is not a sport like boxing," the authors write. "It is more like a cooperative skill, such as dancing." But they warn that "with acquaintances, clients or 'dates,' a bad fight can be final." And although the technique is rooted in the footnotes of wide scholarship, Bach himself admits that some responsible critics worry that the method is too superficial and only skims the surface of deeper problems...