Martial Status and Occupational Success among Mental Health Professionals

Focusing on psychotherapists, this paper explores the way in which marital status and a strategic professional experience, receiving personal psychotherapy, interact to affect occupational success among psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in three metropolitan communities. Confining the analysis to male members of these two professions, data are presented to demonstrate that success is strongly related to marriage, but not marital stability. Success is also strongly related to whether or not practitioners have received personal psychotherapy and, more specifically, to the reasons for having therapy. Both the likelihood of having psychotherapy and the extent to which it was undertaken for purposes of professional training varied by marital status. Thus, although stably married practitioners were less likely to undergo personal therapy than practitioners who had experienced marital disruption or never married, if they do receive therapy, it was more likely to be for the purpose of professional training, with the result that the experience had a greater impact on their level of occupational success. The paper concludes that personal relations, professional experiences and occupational success form a network of relationships which integrate the occupational and nonoccupational roles of highly specialized practitioners.