This book will help practitioners overcome one of the leading challenges in couples therapy: working effectively with the male partner. Men have unique needs and psychological issues that many clinicians may not recognize or know how to address. This volume presents chapters by the leading practitioners associated with current therapeutic models, including Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, Imago Relationship Therapy, Integrated Behavioral Couple Therapy, and more. Using in-depth case examples, they demonstrate how their approaches can be adapted to be "male-sensitive" and respond to the ambivalence so many men experience about couples work. Special topics are also addressed, including infidelity, cultural diversity, working with veterans, and fathering issues. This book will enrich therapists’ work with couples, making treatment a welcoming experience for both partners and the treatment process more gratifying for the therapist.

How to do better, more effective therapy with men. Cultural norms and assumptions color the male experience of psychotherapy, and the traditional notions of masculinity to which many men still cling are, in many ways, antithetical to the tenets and goals of therapy. As a result, even the experienced therapist may find him- or herself struggling when working with male clients. In Men in Therapy, therapists are offered a number of methods for countering men’s general reluctance to open up emotionally or fully engage in therapy. Of course, men cannot be reduced to a single, monolithic group; rather, they start therapy due to a wide range of needs, and come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Therefore, individual chapters are devoted to the treatment of men in relationships, men suffering from depression, fathers, men who abuse women, and men of color. In each case, Wexler provides an informative overview of the issues unique to each group, sound advice, and commonsense methods for treating each of these groups effectively, nonjudgmentally, and professionally.

This book examines a variety of critical issues pertaining to the psychology of men and masculinity and presents successful, evidence-based strategies for treatment. Part 1 focuses on treating men in couples counseling, group work, and career counseling, as well as counseling men about their health. Part 2 explores the intersections of identity for sexual minority men, older men, and fathers, and discusses spiritual work with men in life transitions. Part 3 addresses the concerns of men in the military, prevention of sexual violence, and treating men with addictions and trauma-related issues. Part 4 provides the specific clinical frames of female counselors using relational–cultural theory with men, and examines using motivational and masculine-sensitive therapy with men. Examples and vignettes throughout the text provide clinical relevance, and reflective questions in each chapter encourage readers to explore their own biases and ideas about working with men. *Requests for digital versions from ACA can be found on wiley.com. *To purchase print copies, please visit the ACA website here. *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to [email protected]

Couples Therapy in Managed Care: Facing the Crisis provides social workers, psychologists, and counselors with an overview of the negative effects of the managed care industry on the quality of mental health care. Within this book, you will discover the paradoxes that occur with the mixing of business principals and service principles and find valuable suggestions on how you can creatively cope within the managed care context. With Couples Therapy in Managed Care, you will learn how you can remain true to your own integrity and offer quality services within the current context of today's health care system. Current and comprehensive, Couples Therapy in Managed Care will assist you in easing the dilemma of patients who are suffering from serious physical illness or emotional pain and have little choice or time to search for a needed doctor or service. Couples Therapy in Managed Care offers you informative tips and suggestions on how you can help your clients within the constraints of the managed care system, such as: exploring ways to hold true to your personal values and the integrity of your personal approach to therapy while developing creative strategies to survive within managed care understanding the need to write a treatment plan using high professional standards and a solid theoretical analysis of the proposed therapy to give you a better chance of getting the managed care case manager to authorize your treatments realizing that maintaining a good working relationship with individual case managers will help you get more of your proposed treatments authorized, although their high rate of turnover makes this a daunting task discovering that a sometimes a solution to your problem may be as simple as a phone call to a case manager to negotiate an exception to a standard procedure Couples Therapy in Managed Care offers you effective suggestions to help you overcome the limitations you may encounter while trying to practice within a managed care setting. Innovative and informative, this book will help you provide your patients with the best possible therapy while offering you ways to decrease the stress that managed care systems can cause you and your clients.

Marriage counselor Lori Epting shares both her own and her clients' stories of marital conflict, compromise, and forgiveness to help guide couples from separation and heartache to connection, security, and trust.

This path-breaking volume introduces Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy for clinical work with troubled couples. Practice-focused and engaging, it integrates real-world knowledge of the intersections of gender, culture, power, and identity in relationships with empirical findings on the neurobiology of attraction. Case examples detail the process of therapists in the moment as they develop both their clinical skills and their understanding of the social contexts fueling couples' difficulties. Applications of the method, which can be used with same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones, are shown in addressing infidelity, tapping into partners' spirituality, and modeling and encouraging mutual respect and support. Among the topics covered: Undoing gendered power in heterosexual couple relationships. Interpersonal neurobiology, couples, and the societal context. How gender discourses hijack couple therapy—and how it can be avoided. How SERT therapists develop interventions that address the larger context. Building a circle of care in same-sex couple relationships. Couple therapy with adult survivors of child abuse: gender, power, and trust. Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy opens out practical new possibilities for marriage and family therapists, clinical psychologists, social workers, and counselors seeking ideas for more meaningful couples work.

This handbook reviews therapy and counselling with couples, whether they be married, co-habiting, heterosexual, lesbian or gay. It explores how the problems of closely involved couples are assessed and tackled in different circumstances and in different ways. It places couples therapy in its theoretical and institutional contexts, analyzes immediate therapeutic concerns, and examines the wider roles of agencies, education, research and training.