For participants in the WellConnectedTraining program Core Concepts in Couple Counselling.
Please place all reflections on session two on this page.
This session follows on from the issues presented in the session one, by discussing the importance of recognising and drawing out the primary emotional experience of the couple. Ways of doing this are discussed and demonstrated.
Emotionally focused, solution focused and narrative approaches to couple counselling will be discussed in particular sessions in order to draw out the common factors (or core concepts) in all of these approaches.
Emotionally focused approaches develop a softer and more empathic understanding of self and other.
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| Susan Johnson |
Pre-reading for this session:
Susan Johnson on Attachment, Love and Science":
http://www.psychotherapy.net/article/couples-therapy-attachment
Useful links:
http://www.holdmetight.net
Susan Johnson video: The experience of connection.
References:
Greenberg and Johnson, Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, Guildford 1988
Johnson, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, 2008
Michelle Webster, The Pragmatics of Emotionally Focused Couple Work, 2007
The Michelle Webster article is good on practice suggestions, and can be downloaded here.
NOTE: I have corrected the link to the Webster article.
Core competencies for session two:
1. Able to describe coupld interaction attchment terms
2. Familiarity with different attachment positions
3. Able to select the partner to begin exploration with
4. Able to identify the primaty emotional experience of persone underlying the secondary emotions
5. Able to draw out the primary emotional experience of the persons
6. Ability to comment on the couple interactions from an attachment perspective
7. Ability to identify a softening moment
