Effectiveness of Imago therapy on The Idealism and Inefficient Attitudes of the Women with Marital Conflict with Early Maladaptive Schemata

Early maladaptive schemata can cause different psychological, social, communicative, emotional and marital damages in the people. Therefore, the present study was conducted aiming to investigate the effectiveness of imago therapy on the idealism and inefficient attitudes of the women with marital conflict with early maladaptive schemata.

it was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest and control group design and a two-month follow-up stage. The statistical population of the study included the women with marital conflict with early maladaptive schemata who referred to consultation centers in the city of Tehran in the autumn and winter of 2019-2012. 40 women were selected through purposive sampling method and they were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups (each group of 20). The experimental group received the imago therapy in ten ninety-minute sessions during two and half months. 5 people from the experimental group were excluded from the study and so were 3 people from the control group. The applied questionnaires in this study included idealism, inefficient attitudes scale, marital conflict questionnaire and early maladaptive questionnaire. The data from the study were analyzed through repeated measurement ANOVA using SPSS 23 software.

The results showed that imago therapy has significant effect on the idealism and inefficient attitudes of the women with marital conflict with early maladaptive schemata (p<0.001). This effect was also stable during the follow-up period.

According to the findings of the study it can be concluded that imago therapy can be used as an efficient method to decrease idealism and inefficient attitude of the women with marital conflicts with early maladaptive schemata through focusing on Investigation of childhood wounds and injuries, control exchange and self-integration.