Divorce Doesn’t Have to Be That Way: A Handbook for the Helping Professional


Buy It Now!

Guidebook offers practical advice
(January 2008 Issue)

“Divorce Doesn’t Have to Be That Way:
A Handbook for the Helping Professional”
By Jane Appell, Ph.D.
Impact Publishers, Inc.
Atascadero, Calif. 2006

By Paul Efthim, Ph.D.

Jane Appell, Ph.D., a psychologist in Concord, Mass., couldn't find a practical guide for counselors who want to give healthy support to their patients throughout the divorce process. She reviewed the available literature and was "astounded" that no such book seemed to exist.

So Appell, a divorce specialist in private practice, sat down and wrote the book herself. The result, "Divorce Doesn't Have to Be That Way" is an excellent guidebook for both new and experienced practitioners.

The author takes a positive outlook on a traumatic process - "all parties can and should grow from a divorce" - and shows how we can help families achieve a win/win outcome even when emotional storms have begun in earnest. We learn about specific critical entry points in the process, where patients are on the cusp of making key decisions and are open to input.

In our consulting rooms, when divorce is on the table, people are not only emotionally raw but also enormously vulnerable. Destabilized, beset by chaos from within, they seek concrete guidance and ground rules. This is exactly where helpers can offer tremendous help or, unfortunately, can cause harm. It is all too easy to get sucked into the drama, leading us to go too far in an advocacy role or making recommendations based on limited evidence.

Appell knows this terrain well, having served as a custody evaluator, mediator, parenting coordinator, psychotherapist and provider of professional training on the topic for more than two decades. Using ethical principles as a foundation for treatment, she emphasizes the need for role clarification and boundary maintenance throughout the divorce process. She integrates behavioral, psychoanalytic and systems perspectives in ways that most practitioners will find useful.

This guidebook is well-organized and easy to use, with good use of subheadings and summaries of key points at the end of each chapter. The first three chapters explore critical entry points for helpers, give an overview of the psychological and legal process of divorce and lay out general principles for intervention. The remaining chapters address specific topics, such as the uncoupling process, co-parenting, parental alienation, domestic abuse, navigating the legal process and avoiding common traps. Several appendices offer detailed clinical interview questions for assessing domestic violence and for guiding co-parenting plans.

The book is particularly strong in giving detailed guidelines for counselors in specific situations. For example, when divorcing parents ask how to break the news to the kids, counselors can help by advising them to "tell the children that the marriage was based on love, if indeed it was," and "know which questions you will not answer."

There is an impressive amount of pragmatic advice and clinical wisdom to be found in these pages. Ordinarily I avoid cookie-cutter "how to" therapy manuals, but when it comes to the emotional maelstroms that accompany marital conflict, I wouldn't want to ignore a book that can help me stay grounded and tells me what to say (and not to say) to people in severe pain. "Divorce Doesn't Have to Be That Way" is highly recommended for anyone working with individuals, couples or families where separation or divorce has taken place or is being considered.

Paul Efthim, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist in full-time practice in Brookline, Mass. He holds faculty appointments at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology and the Boston Institute for Psychotherapy.