The Dual Career Couple: Concerns,Benefits, and Counseling Implications

A comprehensive conceptualization of concerns and benefits experienced by dual career couples is presented. Counseling implications are provided to address the concerns. Counselors are asked to expand their roles to help couples challenge unquestioned societal values and practices and uniquely define their own standards for success in career and family roles.     

The Embodied Couple

SUMMARY

Herein is described the use of a specific physical posture for couples to assume for the purpose of assessing the dynamics of their relationship. Its careful and artful use creates a microcosm of the couple's interactive style, revealing significant behaviors and feelings in the therapist's presence.     

The Infertility Resilience Model: Assessing Individual,Couple, and External Predictive Factors

Resilience in couples experiencing infertility is critical to decrease the impact of infertility-related stress and sustain positive interactions and collective perceptions in couples. The Infertility Resilience Model (IRM) presented in this article provides a framework within which various individual, couple, and external factors that influence resilience can be understood. Although numerous approaches have been applied to infertility, few of them have examined resilience and the interconnections between individual, couple, and external influences. The concepts and connections within the model can be used by clinicians for assessment and interventions when working with couples facing infertility.     

The Effectiveness of Couple Therapy

Abstract

Most theories and methods about couple dierapy are developed and tested in Anglo-Saxon countries. In this clinical study, we tested these theories and methods within a Swedish public health context. We assessed the outcomes of 131 couples (262 individuals) using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) and the Family Climate (FC) survey. Initially, the couples displayed severe marital distress and a dysfunctional family climate. Both marital satisfaction and family climate improved considerably, which confirmed the effectiveness of these methods in a Swedish context.     

Attachment Versus Differentiation: The Contemporary Couple Therapy Debate

This paper reviews the current debate between differentiation and attachment in treating couples through exploring the tenets of crucible therapy (Schnarch, 1991) and emotionally focused couple therapy (Johnson, 2004). We provide a review of the two theories—as well as the two “pure form” example models—and explore the debate in light of the integrative movement in couple and family therapy (Lebow, 2014). We also examine points of convergence of the two theories and models, and provide clinicians and researchers with an enhanced understanding of their divergent positions. Both differentiation and attachment are developmental theories that highlight the human experience of balancing individuality and connection in adulthood. The two models converge in terms of metaconcepts that pervade their respective theories and approach. Both models capitalize on the depth and importance of the therapeutic relationship, and provide rich case conceptualization and processes of therapy. However, they substantially differ in terms of how they view the fundamental aspects of adult development, have vastly divergent approaches to how a therapist intervenes in the room, and different ideas of how a healthy couple should function. In light of the deep polarization of the two models, points of integration—particularly between the broader theories of attachment and differentiation—are offered for therapists to consider.     

Multi-Level Couple Therapy: Applying a Metacommunicational Framework of Couple Interactions

Excerpts from a couple therapy case are cited to illustrate the practical significance of a multi-level framework in understanding couple interactions. The clinical implications of the metacommunicational framework, as a metaphor for examining and understanding relational processes, are discussed. Also, the pragmatics of following “process” at a variety of levels when working with punctuational differences, developing therapy strategies and goals, and measuring the progress of couple therapy are discussed.     

Applying Psychoanalysis to Couple Therapy: The Treatment of a Couple with Sexualized Persecutory Internal Objects Resulting from Trauma

The application of psychoanalytic theory and technique to the treatment of couples has been relatively overlooked despite the long history of concern by psychoanalysts with the role of marriage in individual development and suffering. This paper uses an example of marital and sex therapy to illustrate the application of psychoanalytic object relations theory to couple therapy, and describes the way that in-depth treatment of the couple's persecutory object relations that follow severe trauma can be effectively conducted. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of issues of shame and guilt in psychoanalytic theory and their relevance to this couple.     

The Dyadic Relationships Test: Creation and Validation of a Model-Derived,Visual-Verbal Instrument to Evaluate Couple Relationships. Part II

The second part of this article adds evidence to support the psychometric properties of the Dyadic Relationships Test (DRT), designed to evaluate dyadic relationships from a theoretical Selfhood model. This model was presented in an early publication (Cusinato & L'Abate, 2003) and in the first part of this article.     

Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy: Classical Style

In this essay, the core concepts of psychoanalysis are set forth as the context for the application of classical psychoanalytic theory to the practice of couple therapy. Infantile sexuality and aggression are shown to have a powerful role in the interpersonal lives of family members. The repetition compulsion structures marital interaction and intergenerational dynamics. The intrapsychic emphasis of classical ego-psychology is viewed in the interpersonal arena, and the author suggests adding to the Oedipus and Narcissus myths a myth that resonates with this shift in emphasis. In introducing the “Pygmalion–Galatea process,” the author captures the universal attempt to change the psychic dynamics of the other or others. This ultimately mutual process begins with the infant's mirroring of its caretakers—which includes language acquisition. Much of human interaction is fueled by subsequent attempts to create others in our own images of them and by their reactive compliance or resistance to that dynamic. Three case illustrations are presented to show how these phenomena manifest themselves in marital interaction and in dreams.     

Couple Psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom: Past,Present, and Future

ABSTRACT

The evolution of couple psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom is historically rooted in, and currently supported by, what might be called the Tavistock tradition, which principally derives from the work of Tavistock Relationships, a London-based organization combining clinical practice, training, and research. Practitioners working within this tradition draw on a range of psychoanalytic theories and differ in the ways they are applied in clinical practice and with different client groups, but they are united by their focus on relationship dynamics and how these can be affected by unconscious processes. This article charts how the main ideas and practices associated with the Tavistock tradition of couple psychoanalysis came into being, describes the conceptual building blocks that provide the platform for current training and practice, and identifies nodal points that might indicate directions of growth in the future.     

From Couple Therapy 1.0 to a Comprehensive Model: A Roadmap for Sequencing and Integrating Systemic,Psychodynamic, and Behavioral Approaches in Couple Therapy

Couple therapy is a complex undertaking that proceeds best by integrating various schools of thought. Grounded in an in‐depth review of the clinical and research literature, and drawing on the author's 40‐plus years of experience, this paper presents a comprehensive, flexible, and user‐friendly roadmap for conducting couple therapy. It begins by describing “Couple Therapy 1.0,” the basic conjoint couple therapy format in which partners talk to each other with the help of the therapist. After noting the limitations of this model, the paper introduces upgrades derived from systemic, psychodynamic, and behavioral/educational approaches, and shows how to combine and sequence them. The most important upgrade is the early focus on the couple's negative interaction cycle, which causes them pain and impedes their ability to address it. Using a clinical case example, the paper shows how all three approaches can improve couple process as a prerequisite for better problem solving. Additional modules and sequencing choice points are also discussed, including discernment counseling and encouraging positive couple experiences.