Keeping Couples in Treatment: Working from Surface to Depth is written
for the beginning or seasoned therapist who wants to learn a powerful
and effective in-depth approach for keeping couples in treatment. The
book focuses on the problems that present themselves when the therapist
lacking in-depth knowledge of couple treatment loses empathy and
curiosity, resulting in a feeling that couple therapy presents an
overwhelming task. Therapists who embark on couple work need practice
theory for making meaningful contact with the couple's internal
conflicts. In the surface to depth approach the treatment field consists
of two spouses, their unconscious relationship, and the therapist.
Therapists may micro-manage couple emotions because they cannot conceive
ways to deal with couple anxieties because their own anxieties run so
high. This book illustrates the therapist's use of self and the theory
behind this powerful treatment approach that can help therapists more
effectively manage treatment anxieties. For the beginning couple
therapist, this book offers an object relations rationale for treatment
and an expansion of the technical shifts from individual therapy to
couples. The book guides the inexperienced therapist through the
couple's pain, rage, and attacks on the frame when in deeply distressing
situations. For the experienced therapist the book emphasizes the couple
as an unconscious and conscious system best treated using an in-depth
understanding of intrapsychic-interpsychic communications. Couple
situations demonstrate a treatment that experienced therapists will find
liberating. Throughout the book the therapist's countertransference and
use of self as a therapeutic instrument is examined. Divorce,
infidelity, dreams, and disorders of the self are detailed in the case
materials. The cases represent a variety of problems difficult to treat
at any level of therapist experience. The book studies the therapist's
personal feelings and countertransference throughout treatment that
enables the reader to hone his or her capacity to deal with difficult
couples.
