Great article. Another type of analysis I found really helpful was done by Marshall Rosenberg called "non-violent communication", which dissects the "turning toward" and "turning away" phenomena in marital (and other) communication. I cannot recommend his course highly enough, and it's free online (the workshop he did in San Francisco): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXH4hNfgPg

At first I was a little skeptical because it seemed goofy, but I had never heard so incisive an analysis of how and why communication breaks down (or succeeds).