The purpose of this special section is to highlight three cutting edge articles relating to the experience of learning Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). The year 2010 marks 25 years since the initial publication regarding a new, emerging model of couples’ therapy, later named EFT (Johnson & Greenberg, 1985, 1988; see Johnson, 2004 for a comprehensive description of EFT). Since that time, there...

Social relationships are tightly linked to health and well-being. Recent work suggests that social relationships can even serve vital emotion regulation functions by minimizing threat-related neural activity. But relationship distress remains a significant public health problem in North America and elsewhere. A promising approach to helping couples both resolve relationship distress and nurture...

Emotionally focused marital therapy (EFT), a marital therapy that particularly focuses on the creation of secure attachment, has proven in empirical studies to be effective for distressed couples. This paper discusses the application of EFT in couples where one or both of the partners have experienced significant trauma. EFT, in this context of trauma, incorporates the nine steps of conventiona...

In this paper we present a novel concept of emotionally grounded symbols, which gives information about the importance of objects for the survivability of an autonomous robot, in addition emotionally grounded symbol provides information about emotions that were experienced during learning as well. Using this concept we implement an Emotionally Grounded (EGO) Architecture on a quadruped robot, w...

We present emotionally focused therapy (EFT) for couples as a viable treatment option for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We outline the empirical evidence of a link between interpersonal relationships and posttraumatic stress, with an emphasis on social support as a buffer for the development of PTSD symptoms. This leads into a discussion of the usefulness of attachment theory in the con...

This article presents psychotherapy process research findings related to the forgiveness and reconciliation model, known as the Attachment Injury Resolution Model (AIRM), within the context of emotionally focused therapy for couples (EFT). Outcomes for EFT as an intervention for general relationship distress and AIRM have been successfully tested. Audiotapes of nine resolved and nine nonresolve...

The focus of this article is on the link among theory, process, and outcome in the practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples. We describe the EFT model of change and the EFT perspective on adult love as the reflection of underlying attachment processes. We outline the manner in which theory and research inform EFT interventions. This leads into a detailed review of the literatur...

The goal of this study was to use task analysis to verify that the attachment injury resolution model described in this article discriminates resolved from nonresolved couples. Twenty-four couples with an attachment injury received, on average, 13 sessions of emotionally focused therapy (EFT). At the end of treatment, 15 of the 24 couples were identified as resolved. Segments of best sessions f...

BACKGROUND The present study investigated the effect of emotionally focused therapy (EFT) on factors contributing to emotional distress among infertile couples. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this semi-experimental study, the subjects consisted of 12 Iranian couples: six infertile men and six infertile women. They were assessed as depressed, anxious and stressful individuals using depression, anxie...