This essential handbook describes effective treatments for a particularly challenging clinical population: couples struggling with both relationship distress and individual mental health difficulties. Distinguished scientist-practitioners provide detailed accounts of their respective approaches, reviewing conceptual and empirical foundations as well as clinical procedures. Included are well-established treatments for couples in which one or both partners has anxiety, mood disorders, schizophrenia, substance abuse, sexual dysfunction, or physical aggression. Also covered are emerging couple-based approaches to managing personality disorders, PTSD, difficulties related to aging and physical illness, and other problems. Following a standard format to facilitate comparison across treatments, each chapter is illustrated with detailed case material. Provided are powerful insights and tools for couple and family therapists, clinicians providing individual therapy, and students in any mental health discipline.

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

By integrating family therapy principles and individual dynamics, the authors have devised a unique method of face-to-face problem solving, sometimes with the entire family, often in sessions with individual members, to help restore parental responsibility and to realign relationships with the divorcing family.

Couple psychotherapy extends the work of the psychotherapist to the patient’s most significant committed adult relationship, yet the therapy is difficult both conceptually and technically. One major reason for this difficulty is that in every couple’s treatment there is a confusing array of psychological defenses as well as regressive and nonregressive couple object relations-as distinct from the object relations that each individual member brings to the couple. Further, many of these processes are occurring outside consciousness and at the very same time. This book is an attempt to clarify all the confusing issues by presenting a three-factor model of couple psychotherapy within a psychodynamic framework. This model has been found to be very effective with many different kinds of couples. The book suggests that there are three powerful couple dynamics that shape every couple’s treatment: (A) the quality and quantity of the couple’s projective identifications; (B) the level of their “couple object relations”; and (C) the presence or absence of the defense of omnipotent control. These three variables are the most important factors in the therapy; they determine the success or failure of every therapy with every couple. These dynamics also determine quite a bit about how to conduct a couple therapy with regard to the therapist’s level of activity, tone, the way of sorting the material in his or her head, and even the kinds of interventions he/she chooses (whether or not, for example, the therapist will use certain resistance techniques). Understanding these three variables and how they interact is key to the success of the therapy.

How do you counsel a couple that is heading for divorce by the time they seek help? Building on the research presented in their previous book Family Therapies, Mark Yarhouse and James Sells have developed a resource to train pastors and counselors in restoring high conflict relationships.

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.

You hear and read a lot about ways to improve your relationship. But if you've tried these without much success, you're not alone. Many highly reactive couples—pairs that are quick to argue, anger, and blame—need more than just the run-of-the-mill relationship advice to solve their problems in love. When destructive emotions are at the heart of problems in your relationship, no amount of effective communication or intimacy building will fix what ails it. If you're part of a "high-conflict" couple, you need to get control of your emotions first, to stop making things worse, and only then work on building a better relationship. The High-Conflict Couple adapts the powerful techniques of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) into skills you can use to tame out-of-control emotions that flare up in your relationship. Using mindfulness and distress tolerance techniques, you'll learn how to deescalate angry situations before they have a chance to explode into destructive fights. Other approaches will help you disclose your fears, longings, and other vulnerabilities to your partner and validate his or her experiences in return. You'll discover ways to manage problems with negotiation, not conflict, and to find true acceptance and closeness with the person you love the most. This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.