An ability to form and develop a collaborative alliance with each partner and to enlist their support for relationship-focused therapy, for example by: responding empathically in order to validate the experience of each partner, especially their emotional experience accepting and exploring each partner’s reservations about engaging in couple therapy gauging when and whether separate sessions ar...

success or failure of Legal Adoption that everyone working in the field?magistrates, case workers, family doctors, health visitors and others?will welcome this book. It is a report of four years' research, sponsored by the National Association for Mental Health. Miss Robina Addis chaired the advisory panel and the research was financed by the Buttle Trust and made possible by the goodwill of an...

OBJECTIVE We conducted qualitative individual and combined interviews with couples to explore their experiences since the time of taking an HIV test and receiving the test result together, as part of a home-based HIV counselling and testing intervention. METHODS This study was conducted in October 2011 in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, about 2 years after couples tested and received resul...

Many people engage in intrusive behaviors in close relationships. Existing research links intrusive behaviors to a lack of trust and an imbalance between self- and partner-interest. The authors tested the novel hypothesis that people need self-control to regulate intrusive behaviors. Self-control enables people to forgo their self-interests (reassurance or closeness) for the sake of their partn...

Unable to conceive by sexual intercourse, a woman and her husband are now pregnant with their second child. How? Her eggs were fertilized by his sperm in vitro-in a laboratory. Some of these fertilized eggs were implanted into her uterus, while others were frozen to make future attempts possible. The couple's success with in vitro fertilization ("IVF") gives them an opportunity to be parents, b...

INTRODUCTION Power imbalances within sexual relationships have significant implications for HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa. Little is known about how power influences the quality of a relationship, which could be an important pathway leading to healthy behavior around HIV/AIDS. METHODS This paper uses data from 448 heterosexual couples (896 individuals) in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Afr...

In this behavioral observation study, the authors tested predictions derived from various trust models concerning how individuals who are high vs. low in chronic trust perceive and behave during strain-test discussions with their romantic partners. Partners in 92 married/cohabitating couples identified and discussed 2 major strain-test issues in their relationship. Each partner (when in the rol...

The blamer softening event has been associated with successful treatment outcomes in emotionally focused couple therapy. Previous research has highlighted the critical role of softening events and heightened emotional experience in best sessions of emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT). This study examined the effects of a therapist's emotional presence in predicting heightened levels of cli...

When working with homosexuals, it is very important to take into consideration the social and cultural context in which they live. It influences both the problems experienced by them and the process of revealing these problems. It is crucial for professionals who help them. If they are not aware of their own prejudices, their relations with patients are disturbed and the process of treatment is...