Couples Therapy Multiple Perspectives

Couples Therapy, Multiple Perspectives is a springboard from which therapists may begin to answer such questions as What are the ingredients essential to good relationships? What are the ingredients essential to activity within the psychotherapeutic relationship? How can what therapists know regarding psychotherapy be combined to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts? Barbara Jo Brothers aids therapists in answering these and other questions about the basic ingredients, the common denominators, and the universal threads of work with couples from exploring the theories and methods of successful therapists. As there are many ways of looking at couples therapy, this volume encourages therapists to work cooperatively, not competitively, in developing clients’possibilities. Couples Therapy, Multiple Perspectives is intended to assist therapists working with couples achieve a broader view of their work and a richer range of choices in helping their clients. Every article, especially the two by master therapists Florence Kaslow and Maurizio Andolfi, moves readers toward a tapestry of therapeutic possibilities. Features of Couples Therapy, Multiple Perspectives include an in-depth look at the ingredients of a successful marriage, or, what makes marriages work for the long-term by Florence Kaslow; an article by Maurizio Andolfi, translated by Vincenzo DiNicola, which brings together an excellent integration of theories, including those of Bowen, Framo, and Whitaker. Andolfi describes a transgenerational approach to work with couples in crisis, with a case example of the value of doing family-of-origin work in the initial phase of therapy. In an interview segment with Virginia Satir (with Sheldon Starr, PhD, in 1985), she explores how all good therapy has essentially the same ingredients. Readers will find Satir's ideas timeless and thought provoking; indeed they may re-evaluate their own position and theories on therapy with couples.

An outgrowth of an Harvard Medical School Couple Therapy Conference, this is the first book on couple and family therapy to combine a range of clinical theories with a single case discussion. At the conference, Jim Framo, Peggy Papp, Norman Paul, and Carlos Sluzki--therapists well-known for their differing styles and theoretical persuasions--described and explained the sessions they each conducted with the same couple. These sessions varied greatly: each has a distinctive focus; two included family of origin members; one involved a co-therapist. Later, other therapists, representing an even broader range of perspectives, discussed their viewpoints and speculated how they might have approached the same case. In ONE COUPLE, FOUR REALITIES: MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON COUPLE THERAPY, the experience of attending this conference is recreated and expanded. The reader is first given the same background information about the couple that was supplied to the interviewers and is then presented with edited transcripts and commentary by Framo, Papp, Paul, and Sluzki about their own sessions. Further perspectives and approaches to the case are provided by a number of other teachers of therapy. Thus, the reader is invited to view the couple from over a dozen different perspectives, including psychodynamic, object relations, systemic, behavioral, feminist, contextual, and eclectic orientations. Perhaps the most fascinating perspective is provided by the couple, "Larry' and "Jennifer,' who, in the last section of the book, detail their reactions to the four demonstration sessions. Their stunningly candid and intelligent accounts, given soon after the original interviews, and then again six years later, provide a compelling conclusion to the book. Most published cases are selected retrospectively to illustrate the power of the author's approach. By contrast, this couple was selected in advance: their case, ongoing at the time in a Boston clinic, seemed suitable for the demonstration interviews to be videotaped for the Harvard conference. The couple was bright and engaging. They and their families of origin were willing to participate. The interviewers agreed to document the sessions no matter how they turned out. This prospective method of case selection lent authenticity to the interviews, permitting the viewers, and now the reader, to witness clinical work as it might unfold in the office of any therapist. This volume is not intended to and does not demonstrate the superiority of one approach over another. Each of the four demonstration interviews represents careful, conscientious work, and each leads to a different ``reality' about the couple. Only in a volume such as this can one see in high relief what each approach brings to light and what each obscures. All therapists interested in couples should find this book useful, as it stimulates readers to scrutinize their own theories and practices, consider how they might have approached Larry and Jennifer, and ponder what their own viewpoint may have caused them to overlook. Clinicians will appreciate the theoretical discussions and case analyses. The book is a natural supplemental text for courses in couple or family therapy. Teachers may learn much from the appendix which addresses ethical and therapeutic aspects of using videotaped demonstration interviews--important issues that have been neglected in the professional literature. The book may also have personal resonance for non-professionals interested in exploring the complexity of one couple's relationship. All will find ONE COUPLE, FOUR REALITIES accessible and thought-provoking. Through the lives of "Larry' and "Jennifer,' it addresses timeless and timely questions about the personal, familial, and cultural forces that create, shape, and strain the bonds that hold couples together.

In this powerful volume, six qualitative methods are used to analyze a couple therapy with a troubled young couple, illustrating the intricate processes and sub-processes of therapy through client interactions with their therapists and with each other. Increasingly popular for revealing the nuances and complexity of human interactions, qualitative approaches focus on process and discursive methods which can be particularly rewarding in multi-client settings. Through the examples that make up the text, practitioners and researchers become better acquainted with the power of qualitative perspectives and are encouraged to examine their own views on therapy as they consider these and other concepts: The development of dialogical space in a couple therapy session. Introducing novelties into therapeutic dialogue: the importance of minor shifts of the therapist. Therapists’ responses for enhancing change through dialogue: dialogical investigations of change. Fostering dialogue: exploring the therapists’ discursive contributions in a couple therapy. Dominant story, power, and positioning. Constructing the moral order of a relationship in couples therapy. Research Perspectives in Couple Therapy: Discursive Qualitative Methods ably demonstrates the balance between therapeutic art and science for family and couples therapists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals in research and practice.

Winner of the 2014 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship! A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy presents an original model of couples treatment integrating ideas from a host of authors in relational psychoanalysis. It also includes other psychoanalytic traditions as well as ideas from other social sciences. This book addresses a vacuum in contemporary psychoanalysis devoid of a comprehensively relational way to think about the practice of psychoanalytically oriented couples treatment. In this book,Philip Ringstrom sets out a theory of practice that is based on three broad themes: The actualization of self experience in an intimate relationship The partners' capacity for mutual recognition versus mutual negation The relationship having a mind of its own Based on these three themes, Ringstrom's model of treatment is articulated in six non-linear, non-hierarchical steps that wed theory with practice - each powerfully illustrated with case material. These steps initially address the therapist’s attunement to the partners' disparate subjectivities including the critical importance of each one's perspective on the "reality" they co-habit.Their perspectives are fleshed out through the exploration of their developmental histories with focus on factors of gender and culture and more. Out of this arises the examination of how conflictual pasts manifest in dissociated self-states, the illumination of which lends to the enrichment of self-actualization, the facilitation of mutual recognition, and the capacity to more genuinely renegotiate their relationship. The book concludes with a chapter that illustrates one couple treated through all six steps and a chapter on frequently asked questions ("FAQ's") derived from over thirty years of practice, teaching, supervision and presentations during the course of this books development. A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy balances a great range of ways to work with couples, while also providing the means to authentically negotiate their differences in a way which is insightful and invaluable. This book is for practitioners of couples therapy and psychoanalytic practitioners. It is also aimed at undergraduate, graduates, and postgraduate students in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, marriage and family therapy, and social work.

How can you provide effective, meaningful therapy to couples with whom you have little or nothing in common? Couples Therapy: Feminist Perspectives addresses some of the inadequacies, omissions, and assumptions in traditional couples therapy to help you face the issues of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation in helping couples today. In this book, you'll uncover perspectives that are grounded in an appreciation of cultural context, the effects of privilege, and the centrality of a respectful stance on the part of the therapist. Anyone seeking to do informed and responsive work with couples in distress will find it a useful and valuable compilation. Couples Therapy: Feminist Perspectives describes a variety of feminist approaches to couples therapy--giving you a sense of the range of feminist practice in this area and illustrating approaches you can integrate into your work with couples. Specific topics you'll explore include: cultural considerations in couples therapy narrative approaches to couples therapy dilemmas in working with heterosexual couples working with lesbian couples the particular issues of interracial couples the African-American lesbian couple empathy and mutuality in therapy with couples Whether you're an experienced psychologist, social worker, marriage and family counselor, or therapist or a student of family and couples therapy, Couples Therapy: Feminist Perspectives will help you prepare to respond effectively to a more diverse clientele.

This third edition of Couples in Treatment helps readers conceptualize and treat couples from multiple perspectives and with a multitude of techniques. The authors do not advocate any single approach to couple therapy and instead present basic principles and techniques with wide-ranging applicability and the power to invite change, making this the most useful text on integrative, systemic couple therapy. Throughout the book the authors consider the individual, interactional, and intergenerational systems of any case. Gerald Weeks’ Intersystems Model, a comprehensive, integrative, and contextual meta framework, can be superimposed over existing therapy approaches. It emphasizes principles of therapy and can facilitate assessing, conceptualizing couples’ problems, and providing helpful interventions. Couple therapists are encouraged to utilize the principles in this book to enhance their therapeutic process and fit their approach to the client, rather than forcing the client to fit their theory.

This enriching workbook helps readers consider the role that their family of origin and their current family dynamics play in the development and maintenance of their current attitudes, values, and behavior patterns. Readers are encouraged to think about systems theory in general and apply it to their own lives. By working through the book's in-depth interpersonal family life experience exercises, they have a powerful subjective experience which can be used as a vehicle for them discovering their own strengths an weaknesses as potential family therapists.

This up-to-date, highly readable, theory-based, and application-oriented book fills a crucial void in literature on couple therapy. Few books in the couple therapy market bridge the gap between theory and practice; texts tend to lean in one direction or the other, either emphasizing theory and research with little practical application, or taking a cookbook approach that describes specific techniques and interventions that are divorced from any conceptual or theoretical base. However, couples therapy requires a high degree of abstract/conceptual thinking, as well as ingenuity, inventiveness and skill on the part of the therapist. Case Studies in Couples Therapy blends the best of all worlds: clinical applications with challenging and diverse couples that have been derived from the most influential theories and models in couples and family therapy, all written by highly experienced and respected voices in the field. In Case Studies in Couples Therapy, readers will grasp the essentials of major theories and approaches in a few pages and then see how concepts and principles are applied in the work of well-known clinicians. The case studies incorporate a wide variety of couples from diverse backgrounds in a number of different life situations. It is simultaneously narrow (including specific processes and interventions applied with real clients) and broad (clearly outlining a broad array of theories and concepts) in scope, and the interventions in it are directly linked to theoretical perspectives in a clear and systematic way. Students and clinicians alike will find the theoretical overview sections of each chapter clear and easy to follow, and each chapter’s thorough descriptions of effective, practical interventions will give readers a strong sense of the connections between theory and practice.