First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This third edition of Couples in Treatment helps readers conceptualize and treat couples from multiple perspectives and with a multitude of techniques. The authors do not advocate any single approach to couple therapy and instead present basic principles and techniques with wide-ranging applicability and the power to invite change, making this the most useful text on integrative, systemic couple therapy. Throughout the book the authors consider the individual, interactional, and intergenerational systems of any case. Gerald Weeks’ Intersystems Model, a comprehensive, integrative, and contextual meta framework, can be superimposed over existing therapy approaches. It emphasizes principles of therapy and can facilitate assessing, conceptualizing couples’ problems, and providing helpful interventions. Couple therapists are encouraged to utilize the principles in this book to enhance their therapeutic process and fit their approach to the client, rather than forcing the client to fit their theory.

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.

Creating tactics for getting it right the first time. The co-authors draw on over thirty years of experience to show young therapists how and how not to conduct psychotherapy. Each chapter begins with a vignette illustrating a common mistake, then describes the error in detail, explains why therapists make the mistake and offers tactics for avoiding it.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"This brief volume presents the basic premises of solution building, liberally enriched with examples. This is a remarkable book, the first of its kind, radical in its message, written about couples but also suitable for all manner of referrals."--Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries ìElliott Connie has written a remarkable book. Read it and you will be taken on a journey. If you are new to the world of solution focused brief therapy, beware! This book could capture your heartÖAs Elliott says from the very beginning, solution focused brief therapy is simple, so simple it is really hard to learn. And from this book, if you set out to do so, you could teach yourself how to become a competent solution focused brief therapist. It is all here, laid out clearly, packed with examples from the real world of therapy, repeated and repeated like onion skins, each repetition releasing its own flavour, a variation on a theme, a new understanding of something already known.î Chris Iveson, MA BRIEF London, UK Working with couples presents psychotherapists and counselors with a unique set of challenges, such that many therapists prefer not to work with couples or attempt to avoid it entirely. In the first book written about solution focused therapy (SFT) with couples, author Elliott Connie describes how his use of SFT made working with couples a pleasure rather than a burden. The solution focused approach is one that facilitates cooperation between partners in the creation of an agreed-upon future, rather than merely focusing on the problems that have come to define the relationship. Beginning with a clear explanation of the assumptions and tenets required for the practice of SFT, this book presents a step-by-step breakdown of exactly how to conduct solution building sessions with couples. Each chapter focuses on a different part of the therapeutic process and includes sample dialogues, techniques, and vignettes drawn from the authorís own extensive practice. Readers will feel as though they themselves are going through the therapeutic process with the couples and observing the impact of each step of the process. Numerous exercises and common solution focused questions help readers integrate this new material into their repertoire for immediate use. Key Features: Provides a unique view of couples therapy in action using the solution focused approach Includes actual questions to ask clients, sample dialogues, and sample homework assignments Features examples drawn from actual cases, illustrating techniques used in practice with real couples Presents scales to measure progress and supporting research for the application of solution-focused therapy to couples counseling