Where Is All Said and Done

Abstract

It is probably a gross understatement to say that the inner workings of marital and family life hold a fascination for most people. Given this intrinsic interest in the topic, it is not surprising that the study of marital and family interaction cuts across disciplinary boundaries, with researchers housed in a variety of disciplines including communication, psychiatry, social work, sociology, and social, clinical, and developmental psychology. Each discipline approaches the study of family interaction in a somewhat unique fashion. Part of this uniqueness comes from the different weightings each discipline places on the various levels of analysis from which an examination of the family can proceed, including the study of processes within individuals; interactions between individuals; properties of the component relationships, themselves; the family group, as a whole; and the influences of the broader community on the family. The central premise behind the theme of this special issue is our belief that a more complete understanding of communication in the family results from the consideration of more than one level of analysis within the same research endeavor. Our choice of a topic for this special issue was to focus on two levels of analysis that we find particularly intriguing: the intrapersonal and the interpersonal.