The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy


John M. Gottman - 1999
    In addition, there are dozens of questionnaires and interview protocols to be used in both assessment and intervention.In prospective, long-term research with over 700 couples, Gottman has discovered certain factors that distinguish happy, stable couples from both unstable, ultimately divorcing couples and stable but unhappy couples. These findings, which are explained here in understandable, nontechnical language, form the basis of his Sound Marital House theory of marriage, which guides the new therapy. This therapy has two goals: changing the marital friendship and teaching couples to regulate conflict.Despite the high aims of much marital therapy, Gottman found that most marital conflicts involve fundamentally unresolvable relationship issues called "perpetual problems." He shows how therapists can help spouses move from gridlock to dialogue on these issues. Solvable problems can be resolved more easily when the couple has a strong marital friendship. He gives therapists the tools to teach spouses five fundamental skills to develop and strengthen their friendship: softened start-up, accepting influence, repair and de-escalation, compromise, and physiological soothing.Gottman compares his clinic to a restaurant, where clients are offered a menu of treatment formats, from psychoeducation for specific issues to extended therapy to repair a badly damaged marital friendship. Therapists, too, can choose among the questionnaires and strategies for those that fit the needs of particular couples. Whatever their choice, they will find that their practice is greatly enriched by the scientifically-based offerings of The Marriage Clinic.

Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy


Alan S. Gurman - 1995
    Noted contributors, many of whom developed the approaches they describe, combine clear conceptual and historical exposition with hands-on presentations of therapeutic strategies and techniques. Chapters in the new edition adhere even more closely to a uniform structure, facilitating easy comparison of different therapeutic models, and have been extensively rewritten to reflect the latest conceptual, clinical, and empirical advances. Entirely new chapters cover structural¿strategic, transgenerational, narrative, solution-focused, brief integrative, and affective¿reconstructive approaches; prevention and psychoeducation; interventions with families during and after divorce; multicultural couple therapy; and treatment of clients with bipolar disorder as well as other psychiatric and medical problems.

Getting the Love You Want : A Guide for Couples


Harville Hendrix - 2005
    In this groundbreaking book, Dr Harville Hendrix shares with you what he has learned about the psychology of love during more than thirty years of working as a therapist and helps you transform your relationship into a lasting source of love and companionship. For this edition of his classic book, Dr Hendrix and his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, have added a new introduction describing the powerful influence this book has had on so many people over the years. With its step-by-step programme, GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT will help you create a loving, supportive and revitalized partnership.

Becoming an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist: The Workbook


Sue Johnson - 2005
    In an accessible resource for training and supervision, seven expert therapists lead the reader through the nine essential steps of EFT with explicit intervention strategies. Suitable as a companion volume to The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, 2nd Ed. or as a stand-alone learning tool, the workbook provides an easy road-map to mastering the art of EFT with exercises, review sheets and practice models. Unprecedented in its novel and interactive approach, this is a must-have for all therapists searching for lasting and efficient results in couple therapy.

Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships


David Schnarch - 1997
    With a new preface by the author, this updated edition explores the ways we can keep passion alive and even reach the height of sexual and emotional fulfillment later in life. David Schnarch accompanies his inspirational message of attaining long-term happiness with proven techniques developed in worldwide workshops to help couples develop greater intimacy. Chapters provide the scaffolding for overcoming sexual and emotional roadblocks— from evaluating personal expectations to laying the groundwork for keeping the sparks alive years down the road, and everything in between. This book is sure to help couples overcome hurdles in their relationships and reach the fullest potential in their love lives.

You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting With Your Family


Monica McGoldrick - 1995
    Genograms of famous families, such as the Kennedys, the Hepburns, and the Brontes, complement discussions of the influence of birth order, sibling rivalry, family secrets, and couple relationships. Photos & drawings.

Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity


Shirley P. Glass - 2002
    The workplace and the Internet have become fertile breeding grounds for “friendships” that can slowly and insidiously turn into love affairs. Yet you can protect your relationship from emotional or sexual betrayal by recognizing the red flags that mark the stages of slipping into an improper, dangerous intimacy that can threaten your marriage.

Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship


Stan Tatkin - 2012
    Every person is wired for love differently, with different habits, needs, and reactions to conflict. The good news is that most people's minds work in predictable ways and respond well to security, attachment, and rituals, making it possible to actually neurologically prime the brain for greater love and fewer conflicts.Wired for Love is a complete insider’s guide to understanding your partner’s brain and enjoying a romantic relationship built on love and trust. Synthesizing research findings on how and why love lasts drawn from neuroscience, attachment theory, and emotion regulation, this book presents ten guiding principles that can improve any relationship.Strengthen your relationship by:Creating and maintaining a safe “couple bubble” Using morning and evening rituals to stay connected Learning to fight so that nobody loses Becoming the expert on what makes your partner feel loved By learning to use simple gestures and words, readers can learn to put out emotional fires and help their partners feel more safe and secure. The no-fault view of conflict in this book encourages readers to move past a "warring brain" mentality and toward a more cooperative "loving brain" understanding of the relationship. This book is essential reading for couples and others interested in understanding the complex dynamics at work behind love and trust in intimate relationships.While there’s no doubt that love is an inexact science, if you can discover how you and your partner are wired differently, you can overcome your differences to create a lasting intimate connection.

The Intentional Family:: Simple Rituals to Strengthen Family Ties


William J. Doherty - 1997
    Many diverse factors have combined to weaken its structure in American society: the conflicting needs and schedules of dual working parents; the ongoing fragmentation of our civic, cultural, and religious communities; the prevalence of divorce and remarriage; the advent of technological distractions like video games and computers. What was once a strong, cohesive unit has become, in many cases, no more than a loose grouping of individuals with individual timetables and agendas. However, now more that ever before, we have the freedom to shape the kind of family we want, rather that an obligation to conform to inflexible concepts of what a family should be.Nationally respected family therapist William J. Doherty believes that we can strengthen the ties that bind us together-and create new, more permanent ones in the process-through the use of family-specific everyday rituals. The Intentional Family -- a practical guide to avoiding conflicts and promoting understanding -- offers a myriad of simple yet effective methods for opening regular channels of communication between parents and their children, husbands and wives: from shared family meals and vacations, to regular "storytime," weekly drives, religious services, and monthly "spouse only" romantic dinners. Clearly presented and engagingly written, here are proven and indispensable strategies for reviving a lost sense of family -- useful guidelines that will help us make the most of our most important relationships.

The Intelligent Clinician's Guide to the DSM-5


Joel Paris - 2013
    Written by a celebrated professor of psychiatry, this reader-friendly book uses evidence-based critiques and new research to point out where DSM-5 is right, where it is wrong, and where the jury's still out. Along the way, The Intelligent Clinician's Guide to the DSM-5(R) sifts through the many public controversies and clinical debates surrounding the drafting of the manual and shows how they inform a modern understanding of psychiatric illness, diagnosis and treatment. This book is necessary reading for all mental health professionals as they grapple with the first major revision of the DSM to appear in over 30 years.

Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts


Harriet Lerner - 2017
    Harriet Lerner has been studying apologies—and why some people won’t give them—for more than two decades. Now she offers compelling stories and solid theory that bring home how much the simple apology matters and what is required for healing when the hurt we’ve inflicted (or received) is far from simple. Readers will learn how to craft a deeply meaningful “I’m sorry” and avoid apologies that only deepen the original injury.Why Won’t You Apologize? also addresses the compelling needs of the injured party—the one who has been hurt by someone who won’t apologize, tell the truth, or feel remorse. Lerner explains what drives both the non-apologizer and the over-apologizer, as well as why the people who do the worst things are the least able to own up. She helps the injured person resist pressure to forgive too easily and challenges the popular notion that forgiveness is the only path to peace of mind. With her trademark humor and wit, Lerner offers a joyful and sanity-saving guide to setting things right.

Play in Family Therapy


Eliana Gil - 1994
    Too good. Clearly, the title struck a chord, because children often seem to dislike family therapy. And who could fault them for it? The fact is that many family therapists either exclude young children or do not know how to involve them actively in family sessions.... "This is where Dr. Gil's new book succeeds so wonderfully. By drawing on her extensive training and experience as both a child therapist and a family therapist, she shows us how to use all family members' capacities for expressive play simultaneously. Never before have we been treated to such a variety of family play techniques that are presented in such vivid clinical detail....Her methods are captivating to read about and described with sufficient depth so that the reader can visualize their application in everyday clinical situations." --From the Foreword by Robert-Jay Green, Ph.D.In Play in Family Therapy, Dr. Eliana Gil provides a hands-on guide to a wealth of play therapy techniques for working with children ages 3 to 12, and shows how to adapt these techniques to conjoint family therapy. Illustrating the inexhaustible potential that play techniques hold for enhancing relatedness, communication, and understanding among families, this essential new volume represents a major step toward merging child and family therapy.Chapters in Part One cover the history of play therapy and the integration of play into family therapy. In Part Two, clinical vignettes illustrate in user-friendly detail the application of such techniques as puppet interviews, art therapy, and story-telling. Dr. Gil covers the presenting problems and family configurations clinicians are likely to encounter when working with children. Throughout, the text describes the problems that may arise--such as family members' reluctance to use play--and shows how to overcome them by setting a positive tone and conveying the expectation that families will find play enjoyable and rewarding.Providing clinicians with useful play techniques with which to expand their repertoire of family interventions, this work will be invaluable to all therapists and students who work with children and their families.

Mindfulness for Two: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach to Mindfulness in Psychotherapy


Kelly G. Wilson - 2009
    You can learn to skillfully conceptualize cases and structure interventions for your clients. You can have every skill and advantage as a therapist, but if you want to make the most of every session, both you and your client need to show up in the therapy room. Really show up. And this kind of mindful presence can be a lot harder than it sounds.Mindfulness for Two is a practical and theoretical guide to the role mindfulness plays in psychotherapy, specifically acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). In the book, author Kelly Wilson carefully defines mindfulness from an ACT perspective and explores its relationship to the six ACT processes and to the therapeutic relationship itself. With unprecedented clarity, he explains the principles that anchor the ACT model to basic behavioral science. The latter half of the book is a practical guide to observing and fostering mindfulness in your clients and in yourself-good advice you can put to use in your practice right away. Wilson, coauthor of the seminal Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, guides you through this sometimes-challenging material with the clarity, humor, and warmth for which he is known around the world. More than any other resource available, Mindfulness for Two gets at the heart of Wilson's unique brand of experiential ACT training.The book includes a DVD-ROM with more than six hours of sample therapy sessions with a variety of therapists on QuickTime video, DRM-free audio tracks of Wilson leading guided mindfulness exercises, and more. To find out more, please visit www.mindfulnessfortwo.com.

Hope-Focused Marriage Counseling: A Guide to Brief Therapy


Everett L. Worthington Jr. - 1999
    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. His hope-focused (rather than problem-focused) approach enables couples to see that change is possible and gives them a new outlook on the future. Combining this with a brief approach that addresses the realities of managed care and tight budgets, Worthington shows how to be strategic in each counseling situation by including teaching, training, exercises, forgiveness, modeling and motivation. At the heart of the book are dozens of interventions and exercises, includingdrawing on central values promoting confession and forgiveness strengthening communication aiding conflict resolution changing patterns of thinking developing intimacy cementing commitment Backed by years of experience and substantial research, hope-focused marriage counseling offers hope to counselors that they can provide help to troubled couples quickly, compassionately and effectively. This paperback edition includes a new introduction, summarizing the latest findings and developments in marital counseling and applying hope-focused marriage counseling to today's cultural and clinical realities.

Family Evaluation


Michael E. Kerr - 1988
    Bowen’s persistent inquiry and devotion to family observation, in spite of obstacles and frustrations, have resulted in a theory that has radically changed our ways of looking at all behavior.