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Three’s a crowd, or who are you really having sex with? |
| "What a good idea of Sarah Browne’s when she muses in the July 2007 issue that relationship therapy should be a much more regular part of therapy today" |
Negotiated nonmonogamy and male couples |
| "Accepted tenets of heterosexual culture and mores cannot be applied to gay partnerships without unacceptably assuming psychopathology where none exists" |
Emotion in couple therapy |
| "A close look at the current state and new directions in emotionally focused couple therapy shows that fresh transformational emotional experiences have the power to impact self, the couple and the family" |
Attachment, couples and the talking cure |
| "Is it all Mars and Venus and hopeless? Or can we use the couple’s communication patterns to understand their attachment issues?" |
Learning zone
Dilemmas
This month's dilemma: Cameron gets on well with his therapist. They have developed a quasi-supervisory relationship during his counselling training and now he thinks she might be an ideal supervisor
Read moreStudent column
We’ve always been told throughout the counselling course that the journey each of us will follow during training will change us
Read moreCounselling and Psychotherapy Research (CPR)
is a peer reviewed, quarterly international journal. Visit http://www.cprjournal.com/ to read abstracts, receive regular e-bulletins and access the research glossaryHindsights
Why I became a counsellor
What makes a good therapist? What values do you hold dear? Former nurse Els van Ooijen wanted to be able to help her patients emotionally, but also to understand and heal herself
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Even if you don’t work with couples, you will surely learn something from reading this collection of articles which are about intimacy, gender difference and sexual fantasy – all areas that most individual clients will be interested in exploring. My verdict after reading them is that if you’re in a longterm happy partnership and having a satisfying sex life then you’re doing very well indeed!
Editorial
I have much the same reaction to these articles on couples work as I had to our special issue on family therapy six month ago. That is, how valuable it is to work with the relationship and not always with the client's internal world. Even if you don’t work with couples, there will surely lbe plenty of interest in these articles about intimacy, gender difference and sexual fantasy. My verdict after reading them is that if you’re in a long term happy partnership and having a satisfying sex life then you’re doing very well indeed! It'smade me realise also that relationship therapy should be a much more regular part of this journal.
Christopher Clulow applies attachment theory to therapeutic work with couples and suggests that breakdown in communication might be understood, not with regard to a culture clash in terms of gender, but to diffferences in the range of attachment styles. Attachment theory is also the theoretical base for Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy which Sue Johnson explores: here the therapist tracks each partner's emotions as a guide to his/her inner world and restructures their emotional engagement.
Esther Perel, a sex therapist based in the States and author of Mating in captivity: sex, lies and domestic bliss is of the view that intimacy and familiarity can make for very boring sex. The challenge for therapists working with couples, she says, is to reconcile the need for what's safe and predictable with the desire to pursue what is exciting and mysterious. Instead of encouraging her clients to increase opportunities for intimacy, she suggests, for example, to one couple that they begin an email correspondence that allows space for fantasy and anonymity.
Michael Shernoff's very thought-provoking article looks at the need for therapists who work with gay men to be able to challenge their heterosexual cultural biases regarding monogamy and nonmanogamy. Male couples, he says, are highly diverse and for some, nonmonogamy does not imply avoidance of intimacy or that the relationship is in trouble as it might do for a heterosexual couple. To be competent to work with male couples – and I would suggest gay men in general – therapists need to open up their minds to these possible differences in interpretation of sexual non-exclusivity.
We look forward to your letters and wish you a good summer break.
