A Model of Marital Resolution

SUMMARY

This article describes a brief model for exploring reconciliation with couples seeking divorce mediation. The model entails a sequence of individual and conjoint sessions, which are illustrated by a case example. The roles of attachment and ambivalence are presented for the model. Ethical issues related to discussing possible reconciliation with couples considering divorce are discussed and the distinction between mediation and psychotherapy is developed. The article concludes with contraindications and recommendations for the future.     

A review of career anchors in use

Abstract

As organizations respond to the competitive pressures of today, so their management structures become leaner and fitter. In this process, the nature of the career opportunities change as does the organization's perspective of the individual and his or her career. An employer for life is a thing of the past. The corollary to this is that companies now want their people to be less dependent on their employer and to take more responsibility for ensuring their career path is right for them. To do this, people must be provided with the tools to take on this mantle. They need to understand themselves better. Their decisions are now even more critical. Career Anchors is one such tool and its applications are reviewed in this article. It provides an effective insight for individuals and enables them to recognize their talents, values, and motives.     

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy With Neurodegenerative Diseases: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT

This research wants to verify the effectiveness of couple's treatment, when a neurodegenerative disease affects one of the two partners. The disease affects not only the ailing individual, but also the dynamics within the couple. Fourteen patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases participated in an emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) with their spouses. We collected a measure of the quality of life (SF-36) and relationship satisfaction (DAS) at the beginning and at the end of the treatment for both partners. The results show an improvement in quality of life and couple contentment, underlining the usefulness of such a psychotherapeutic intervention on the couple.     

Trauma and deprivation: The relationship between early object relations and the constitution of a sense of self

Abstract

The paper analyzes the relationship between deprivation and trauma, based on a clinical vignette of a male child, born to a psychotic mother and adopted by a foreign couple when he was seven years old. Based on the importance of maternal care and of a holding environment for the constitution of a sense of self during infancy and childhood, this paper will discuss the factors that facilitated this child's capability to form emotional ties and to constitute a psychical reality even when faced with a very precarious life situation and maternal loss.     

Investigating Inter-Christian and Intercultural Couples Associated with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America: A Qualitative Research Project

This qualitative research project described individual, marital, and family challenges from the perspective of 376 intermarried respondents associated with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Participants' observations generally suggested that their religious and cultural differences enriched their own and their family's well-being. However, some participants described pervasive and lingering unresolved couple disagreements linked to their religious and cultural differences. These differences seemed to have a decidedly negative impact on individual, couple, and family well-being. Clinical implications suggest that intermarried couples' different religious and cultural backgrounds may be interconnected to the presenting problem(s) of couples.     

The men's movement: Substance and significance for mainstream men

Abstract

The men's movement has a breadth and significance for mainstream men, too little evidenced. This paper provides a historical review of the men's movement and presents implications for mainstream men. Four themes in the men's movement are identified: 1) men adopting a feminist philosophy, 2) fathers with equal rights interest in divorce, 3) men supportive of gay rights, and 4) mythopoetic men. Implications for mainstream men and emotional health are considered for each theme within the Men's Movement. Finally, it is argued that each time a man struggles to balance his work with his family, his anger with his pain and his power with his care, he is an active participant in the men's movement.     

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, about 20% of children do not have any contact with their non-resident parent after parental divorce. There are often many reasons underlying the broken contact, but one might well be the process of parental alienation, when the child denigrates and excludes the non-resident parent. This article presents the results of two studies conducted among divorce experts and divorced, non-resident parents. A total of 138 respondents co-operated in our studies. Of the respondents, 58% thought PAS either does not, or rarely occurs in the Netherlands, and 42% thought it does occur. The extent of parental alienation was classified as mild (33%) or moderate (9%). From our factor analysis, it became clear that Gardner's classification of eight separate symptoms of parental alienation was not evident in our research data. We were able to distinguish four separate aspects: two of them concerning alienation due to the resident parent and two concerning alienation due to the child. Our results underpin the importance of mediation, since it seemed that parental alienation syndrome (PAS) occurred significantly more often when decisions with relation to the children were not taken together by the parents but were determined in court. We consider that compulsory mediation and better communication during divorce would prevent many cases of PAS.     

Intertraumatic Dissociative Attachment

SUMMARY

This article focuses on the treatment of couples with a collective personal history of multiple traumatic experiences, and central related concepts. Referred to as the intertrauma couples therapy (InTCT) model, this article outlines an approach to treating trauma victim couples in which each partner has suffered one or more traumatic experiences (i.e., war, rape, criminal assault, incest, community violence, etc.). InTCT is a structured five-phase model of care, derived from a long trauma treatment tradition, and the author's clinical experience in the treatment of multitrauma persons for over 20 years.

This comprehensive, integrative approach to treatment is designed to resolve chronic interpersonal hostility, isolation in marriage, fears of intimacy and engulfment, and the persistent revivifications of partners' traumatic memories as a painful product of daily relational encounters. Unfortunately, these encounters represent trauma structures interacting with trauma structures, with no end or relief to the mutual pain-generating interactional patterns. The phases of the treatment takes the couple from disorganization and intense emotional reactivity to stabilization through integration to an end phase with a post-integration life skills building program for lasting results. Also presented are issues such as attachment, specific trauma responses to include interactive concepts of trauma bonding and systems theory in the context of trauma and dissociation. The article also presents a multitrauma couple case study, and discusses the critical role of therapist's functions.     

Asian American Intermarriage

SUMMARY

This paper describes the therapeutic process of an interracial couple: an Asian American woman and a White American man. The intent of this therapy was to broaden the conversational space and encourage the couple to explore the effects of cultural beliefs and practices on their relationship. The therapist introduced two approaches for evoking the couple's interest in sharing narratives about their individual and couple racial identity. One approach was to have the couple interview their partner's “internalized other.” The other approach used two research studies to stimulate conversation about outmarriage with Asian Americans. This case study offers an account of two different ways individual narratives and shared conversational space can be expanded.     

The unconscious and consciousness of the memory: A contribution from neuroscience

Abstract

By integrating data from general psychology and perinatal clinical psychology with neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the author discusses the relations between memory and consciousness, the aim being a unitary definition of the concept of unconscious. Nobody has a brain that can be the same as any other person's: the biology of memory lies in neural networks that have been constructed in the brain of that specific person by their experience. From the fetal stage, each brain progressively learns its own individual functions during its relational neuropsychic development. The author underlines how the continuous emotional biological work of the brain, together with a person's entire relational life, produces the construction of the whole functional and individual mindbrain. The whole construction is memory and this is unconscious; indeed it may be the true unconscious. From the continuous silent work of the mindbrain of a person, some forms of conscious level may emerge in his individual's subjectivity: some functioning of mindbrain makes what an individual person can consciously remember. The unconscious is only what appears in some form in an analyst's consciousness, at some specific moment in his relationship with a patient, and which the analyst translates into some form of his verbal interpretation.     

Pregnancy,Intimacy, and the Family Constitution

SUMMARY

The psychological effects of pregnancy and birth have a profound effect on the parents' relationship, especially on their experience of intimacy. The nature of the impact on the couple depends on the developmental stage of each parent and the couple's ability to adapt to new circumstances. Three developmental stages are described and the “family constitution” is presented as the body of goals, rules and roles that governs the behavior of the family and effectively managing the constitution is introduced and applied to two sets of circumstances related to pregnancy. Finally, the implications of the above concepts for therapists and counselors are delineated.     

Emotional mortgage

Abstract

Couples who are given property by their parents as a wedding gift or as a gift a little later in the marriage appear to start off their marriages with a bonus that any couple would certainly envy. Often, however, the “given” property has strings attached and the “lucky” couple finds themselves in emotional mortgage to one of their parents. Emotional mortgage is seen as a debt of loyalty and obligation owed to one of the spouse's parents which places the couple in a position of servitude in regard to those parents. The expectation of eventual ownership of property appears to be the mechanism which binds the couple to the parents in the face of countless intrusions and usurpations by the parents.     

The Impact of Parental Abduction on the Couple

SUMMARY

The abduction of a parent's child by the other parent can be an extremely heart-wrenching experience. Not only are the child's whereabouts and safety placed in doubt, the searching parent's life is thrown into turmoil. This case example describes the impact that the long-term abduction of a mother's son had on the mother's ability to maintain a relationship as a member of a new couple.     

Virginia Satir's Process of Change

SUMMARY

This article describes Virginia Satir's theoretical base out of which grows the theory and practice of her process of change in psychotherapy. Her theory is set in a context of other psychothcrupeulic theories and is described with case examples of application. Virginia's process of change is applied to individual, couple and family therapy particularly its application to cultural change is discussed.     

Psychoanalysis,violence and rage-type murder

Abstract

This paper presents and explores some ideas about the ways that children referred to a London borough learning support service, their teachers and school managers can be helped by a specialist teacher making use of her training as a psychodynamic counsellor and child psychotherapist. This paper is based on the premise that conditions necessary for feeling secure and establishing the capacity to think and learn by experience are based upon the infant's experience of a facilitating maternal environment coupled with the infant's ability to engage in this relationship. By extension, children need to feel safe enough in order to take advantage of the learning and social opportunities offered in the context of the school environment. The author draws upon psychoanalytic theories and developmental psychology as useful frameworks for understanding the continuing impact of infantile experience upon the learning process. The author also draws attention to the context of her work as an area support teacher, concluding that prevailing political demands for rapid change hinder the capacity of educational support services, schools and individual staff from mediating effectively the emotional demands of children trying to engage in the difficult task of learning.

One starts somewhere -where the learner is. And one starts whenever the student arrives to begin his career as a learner.     

Making sense of emotion in stories and social life

Abstract

This paper is concerned with some limitations of the vignette methodology used in contemporary appraisal research and their implications for appraisal theory. We focus on two recent studies in which emotional manipulations were achieved using textual materials, and criticise the investigators' apparent implicit assumption that participation in everyday social reality is somehow comparable to reading a story. We take issue with three related aspects of this cognitive analogy between life and its narrative representation, by arguing that emotional reactions in real life are not necessarily mediated by symbolic processes, that people are involved participants of real life rather than neutral observers, and that in real life people's evaluations and emotions are typically part of an ongoing dialogue rather than the expression of a soliloquy. Results from these studies of emotional vignettes therefore tend to overestimate the importance of constructive, abstract, and individualistic processes in the everyday causation of social emotions. In real life, people do not necessarily have to calculate, transform, or internally represent the meaning of the dynamic situation in order to make emotional sense of what is happening to them in the social world.     

Child Access and Visitation Following Divorce: A Growth Area for Marriage and Family Therapy

Recent federal legislation encourages states to increase noncustodial parents' access and visitation with their children following separation or divorce. The State of Iowa Department of Human Services Bureau of Collections commissioned a pilot study to provide a beginning picture of how parents and professionals experience the child access and visitation process. Two midsized urban centers and a rural community were studied. A total of 14 divorced parents and 16 professionals who work with divorced individuals were interviewed using a 2-hour focus group format. Study findings identified problematic themes regarding child access and visitation, potential solutions, and suggested services to address these problems. The services suggested by the study all fall within the professional expertise of marriage and family therapists. A primary finding of the study was the need for therapy and mediation focused on relational issues.     

Therapeutic handling of marital infidelity

Abstract

In working with couples and families, the occasional clinical use of mental imagery techniques can frequently promote therapeutic breakthroughs. When sessions focused on a couple's (family's) current communication problems reach a point where progress seems slow and laborious, a therapist can encourage the couple (parents and perhaps even older children) to try one or more imagery sessions to understand their interactional patterns within the context of their own developmental periods. This article describes how imagery can lead couples to new and more constructive perspectives on the meaning of their interactions.     

A home of her own: (Writing) a family story of separation and second chances

Abstract

On March 16, 1996, the author interviewed her mother, Beth Tillmann, about Beth's parents' divorce and her life as a foster child. From detailed notes taken during this phone conversation and from family stories told to the author throughout tier life, the author constructed a narrative titled “A Home of Her Own” Its structure and tone mimic the way her mother speaks about the dissolution of her family of origin and her attachments to and separations from those who tried to lielp her rebuild a sense of home. After the story is a discussion of what narrative representations of loss offer the writer, the subject, and the reader.     

Fathers' and Mothers' Emotional Accessibility and Youth's Developmental Outcomes

ABSTRACT

This study examined the association between parents' emotional accessibility and youth's functioning. Participants included 154 parents who completed measures of parental emotional accessibility and their children's emotional and behavioral problems. Results showed that mothers are more emotionally accessible to their children. Mothers' emotional accessibility was associated negatively with youth's emotional and behavioral problems; whereas, fathers' emotional accessibility was associated with only youth's behavioral problems. This study highlights the importance of examining parental emotional accessibility when studying youth's development, utilizing parental perceptions to learn about youth and family functioning, and actively including fathers in family research studies.