Emotion-focused couple therapy (EFT-C) was introduced in the l980’s by Leslie Greenberg and Susan Johnson as an alternative to behavioral approaches which often viewed emotions, especially negative emotions, as part of the problem rather than as a powerful and necessary agent of change. The emphasis of EFT-C (Greenberg and Johnson, l988) was on creating a more secure attachment by helping the p...

We find interventions targeting serodiscordant couples (SDC) may not be feasible in countries where HIV prevalence is less than 5%, because only 3-19/1000 individuals are HIV-positive/negative and in SDC. Interventions may be feasible in countries where prevalence is greater than 10%, because 34-48/1000 individuals are HIV-positive/negative and in SDC. We calculated that 20-27% of all HIV-posit...

Couple therapy research affirms that various approaches to couple treatment produce statistically and clinically significant improvement for a substantial proportion of couples in reducing overall relationship distress. Recent studies have extended these findings in indicating the effectiveness of couple-based interventions for a broad range of coexisting emotional, behavioral, or physical heal...

Though it is clear from meta-analytic research that couple therapy works well, it is less clear how couple therapy works. Efforts to attribute change to the unique ingredients of a particular model have consistently turned up short, leading many researchers to suggest that change is due to common factors that run through different treatment approaches and settings. The purpose of this article i...

In this article, we propose the vulnerability cycle as a construct for understanding and working with couples' impasses. We expand the interactional concept of couples' reciprocal patterns to include behavioral and subjective dimensions, and articulate specific processes that trigger and maintain couples' entanglements. We consider the vulnerability cycle as a nexus of integration in which "vul...

This article describes an innovative model of couples therapy designed to mitigate marital instability. The authors suggest that combining ongoing couples therapy with a separate relationship-focused group for each partner favorably impacts each person's neuropsychophysiological regulation and their ability to participate in a stable intimate marriage. The neurobiology of attachment theory is s...

In this article, we review the major conceptual and clinical influences and trends in the history of couple therapy to date, and also chronicle the history of research on couple therapy. The evolving patterns in theory and practice are reviewed as having progressed through four distinctive phases: Phase I--Atheoretical Marriage Counseling Formation (1930-1963); Phase II--Psychoanalytic Experime...

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...

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...