A Life-Cycle Approach to Treating Couples draws on 30 years of clinical work and a rich body of research about lifecycle theory to offer couple therapists a guide to helping couples traverse six developmental stages—dating and commitment; transition to parenthood; midlife couples; launching and retiring couples; late-life couples; and relationship endings. For each stage, the author offers clinical vignettes as well as questions and strategies for the clinician to pursue. In this clear and authoritative book, Fishel provides examples and research about clients who are diverse in their marital status, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, SES, and health.
All couples go through challenging times: some survive and thrive, others don't. How can we understand and use this distinction in the practical application of therapy? In their solution-oriented, competency-based approach to couples therapy, Phillip Ziegler and Tobey Hiller answer this question. In Recreating Partnership, an innovative, theoretically sound, and practical handbook for clinicians, Ziegler and Hiller present a bold and clinically useful concept, the good story/bad story dichotomy. The book shows clinicians how to use this narrative concept in conducting effective and efficient relationship therapy that will help couples build solutions collaboratively, invigorate partnership, and thrive, each in their own unique ways. The book covers issues such as establishing rapport with antagonistic partners; developing therapeutic goals; hosting conversations that reinvigorate the couple's good story; how, when, and whether to offer task assignments; addressing issues such as domestic violence; and how to bring therapy to a close, as well as many cogent and helpful transcripts. Written for psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and anyone who works with couples, Recreating Partnership will be exciting and useful to both the novice and experienced practitioner.
An ideal supplemental text, this instructive casebook presents in-depth illustrations of treatment based on the most important couple therapy models. An array of leading clinicians offer a window onto how they work with clients grappling with mild and more serious clinical concerns, including conflicts surrounding intimacy, sex, power, and communication; parenting issues; and mental illness. Featuring couples of varying ages, cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientations, the cases shed light on both what works and what doesn't work when treating intimate partners. Each candid case presentation includes engaging comments and discussion questions from the editor. See also Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy, Fourth Edition, also edited by Alan S. Gurman, which provides an authoritative overview of theory and practice.
By drawing upon object relations concepts, the couples therapist is able to work with both the intrapsychic makeup of the partners and their ways of relating as a couple.
Couples and families face daunting challenges as they cope with serious illness and disability. This book gives clinicians a roadmap for helping affected individuals and their loved ones live well with a wide range of child, adult, and later-life conditions. John S. Rolland describes ways to intervene with emerging challenges over the course of long-term or life-threatening disorders. Using vivid case examples, he illustrates how clinicians can help families harness their strengths for positive adaptation and relational growth. Rolland's integrated systemic approach is useful for preventive screening, consultations, brief counseling, more intensive therapy, and multifamily groups, across health care settings and disciplines. This book significantly advances the clinical utility of Rolland?s earlier landmark volume, Families, Illness, and Disability.
Everett L. Worthington Jr. offers a comprehensive manual for assisting couples over common rough spots and through serious problems in a manner that is compassionate, effective and brief.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part I: Introduction. Family theory and therapy: an overview. Part II: Family Therapy: Theory and Techniques. Introduction to family theories. Structural family therapy. Constructing therapy: from strategic, to systemic, to narrative models. Psychodynamic family therapy. Multigenerational family systems theory of Bowen and its application. Contextual therapy. Behavioral family therapy. Psychoeducational family intervention. Social network intervention. Gender-sensitive family therapy. Techniques of family therapy. Family theories: conclusion. Part III: Family Assessment. Initial and diagnostic family interviews. Family assessment. The family life cycle: a framework for understanding family development. Functional and dysfunctional families. Diagnosis of family relational disorders. Part IV: Family Therapy With Children and Adolescents. Family therapy with children and adolescents: an overview. Family therapy with children: a model for engaging the whole family. Parent management training. Part V: Marital Therapy. Marital therapy: an overview. Psychodynamic couples therapy. Behavioral couples therapy. The divorcing family: characteristics and interventions. The remarried family: characteristics and interventions. Marital enrichment in clinical practice. Sex therapy at the turn of the century: new awareness and response. Part VI: Family Therapy With Different Disorders. Family variables and interventions in schizophrenia. Depression and the family: interpersonal context and family. Family intervention and psychiatric hospitalization. National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and family psychiatry: working toward a collaborative model. Alcoholic and substance-abusing families. Family intervention with incest. Family therapy with personality disorders. The impact of culture and ethnicity on family. Medical family therapy. Part VII: Research in Family and Marital Therapy. The state of family therapy research: a positive prognosis. Couples therapy research: status and directions. Conclusion and future directions. References. Index.
The essential guide to successful couples therapy at every stage ofthe lifecycle A variety of therapeutic interventions can help couples developthe tools for a successful relationship. Yet many practitionersbegin seeing couples without extensive training in couples work. Tofill this gap in their therapeutic repertoires, noted couplestherapist Michele Harway brings together other well-known expertsin marriage and family therapy to offer the Handbook of CouplesTherapy, a comprehensive guide to the study and practice of couplestherapy. The book's chapters provide a variety of perspectives alongdevelopmental, theoretical, and situational lines. Recognizing theneed for clinically proven, evidence-based approaches, chaptersprovide detailed coverage of the most effective treatment modes.Couples at different stages of the lifecycle feature prominently inthe text, as do relevant special issues and treatment approachesfor each stage. Subjects covered include: Premarital counseling from the PAIRS perspective (an extensivecurriculum of interventions for premarital couples) The first years of marital commitment Couples with young children Couples with adolescents Therapy with older couples Same sex couples A variety of theoretical approaches, includingCognitive-Behavioral, Object Relational, Narrative, Integrative,and Feminist and Contextual Special issues and situations, including serious illness,physical aggression, addiction, infidelity, and religious/spiritualcommitments or conflicts Providing a diverse set of treatment approaches suited to workingwith a wide range of adult populations, the Handbook of CouplesTherapy is an essential resource for mental healthprofessionals working with couples.
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.
Couples and Family Therapy in Clinical Practice has been the psychiatric and mental health clinician's trusted companion for over four decades. This new fifth edition delivers the essential information that clinicians of all disciplines need to provide effective family-centered interventions for couples and families. A practical clinical guide, it helps clinicians integrate family-systems approaches with pharmacotherapies for individual patients and their families. Couples and Family Therapy in Clinical Practice draws on the authors’ extensive clinical experience as well as on the scientific literature in the family-systems, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and neuroscience fields.
