Theory and Practice of Couples and Family Counseling. James Robert Bitter
Key figures: John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, Robert LevensonStarting in the 1970s, John Gottman and Robert Levenson began to study couples in conflict. Starting at the University of Illinois and later at the University of Washington, they conducted several longitudinal studies that eventually involved the psychophysiological measurement of couples in distress. They started with a study of sequential patterns in couples and found that couples’ interactions had enormous stability over time, that problems never really got resolved, and ultimately that there were patterns of interaction that predicted divorce just as there were patterns that characterized happy relationships. In the 1990s, John Gottman and his wife, Julie Schwartz Gottman, formed the Gottman Institute in Seattle, Washington. Their couples work is an example of translational research that involves the use of scientific data in the development of effective couples relationships.
Emotionally Focused Counseling With Couples
Key figures: Susan M. JohnsonSusan Johnson originally worked with Les Greenberg in the early development of emotionally focused therapy until Greenberg decided to go in a different direction, focusing primarily on individuals. Although both of these founders refer to their work as “emotionally focused,” they mean very different things by the term. Susan M. Johnson uses the term “emotionally focused therapy” to refer to relationships as a holding space for attachment issues and the possibility of a new emotional regulation. The end point of counseling is emotional connection, functional interdependence, safety and security, and a sense of belonging to each other.
Imago Counseling With Couples
Key figures: Harville Hendrix, Helen HuntSimilar to emotionally focused therapy with couples, imago therapy is built on an understanding of the breaches that occur in attachment and resulting childhood wounds. Hendrix notes that couples will often search through all possible partners who might be good for them to pick someone similar to people with whom they have unfinished business. In so doing, they look to the partner to stretch beyond the limitations of the original wounding relationship. To the extent that each partner can do this, the marriage or coupling becomes a path to wholeness. Imago therapy is built on identifying childhood wounds and then using highly structured dialogues to help the couple connect and fully engage with one another.
As you read these differing approaches to couples and family practice, know that it is impossible to integrate all of them. Some ideas and conceptualizations fit together better than others. It is enormously hard, for example, to see how social constructionist models and structural-strategic models might merge when the roles and functions of the family practitioners are so different. Similarly, it is hard to imagine how experiential models might be integrated with cognitive behavior therapy. But perhaps these last two statements only reflect my lack of imagination. Maybe you will see the thread that can be used to stitch such an integration into your own personal tapestry of family counseling.
Suggestions for Using the Book
I have attempted to write this book as if we were having a conversation. It still contains all the references you will need to further consider each topic, but its most important function is to invite you into the world of couples and family counseling and to consider whether this kind of work is right for you. Any kind of work in the helping professions, whether it is counseling, psychotherapy, or family practice, requires personal development as well as professional skills. There are many professions in which it is possible to be competent without addressing who we are as people—for example, engineering, visual arts, mathematics, or the sciences—although even these career fields are enhanced by personal develop ment and growth. In the helping professions, and especially in family practice, who you are as a person is central to everything you do: You are the instrument that provides the catalyst for change.
As you read each chapter, consider how it applies to your own life, your own experiences, and your own worldview or perspectives. Can you see yourself approaching clients in the way that each of the models in this book suggests? Which techniques would you find comfortable, and which would be a stretch for you? What can you learn about your own family of origin from studying each of the theories in this book? Do they help you change any of the ways in which you approach family members now? What would it be like for you, as a client, to go see each of these family practitioners? And most important, what would it say about you as a person and as a professional to be part of a profession in family counseling?
The integration chapter presented at the end of the book relies in part on the development of different perspectives or lenses in counseling practice. These lenses (sometimes called metaframeworks; Breunlin et al., 1997; Pinsof et al., 2018) allow you to consider a couple or family from many angles and to develop a more holistic, context-embedded view of the family and its members. Different approaches will help you assess and understand the purposes for which couples and families interact; their communication processes; sequences or patterns of interaction; the organization and rules that govern the family; the developmental stages of the family; and the gender, cultural, and societal issues that may be affecting client relationships. And all of them will have some impact on how you develop your own self-awareness.
I often think of multiple perspectives in the same way I might look at a tree—or any object for that matter. At a great distance, a tree looks almost flat, as if it were painted against some pastoral background on a canvas. As I approach the tree, it begins to take on shape and texture; I can see the cylindrical roundness of its trunk and limbs, the shape of the leaves, and even the texture of the bark. When I get close enough to touch the tree, I can feel the differences in these textures and imagine its history, how long it has been here, and what it has been through to attain the shape and posture that it currently holds. I can walk around the tree, and in some cases I can even crawl up into it. I can feel the muscles in my own body stretch and contract as I pull myself up from limb to limb. I can feel the wind blowing through the tree and over my face and hands. For a while, I am part of the tree, and still I am different and not part of the tree.
Although this metaphor works for me in terms of thinking about the many perspectives that can aid me in knowing and understanding a couple or family, it also invites me to consider my relationship to the tree in terms of change. Should I simply get to know the tree and then let it be? Do I think of it as a tree I just happened to encounter, or is it a tree placed in my care? Does it need pruning, and, if so, in what way? Does it need fertilizer, and, if so, what kind and how much and at what time in its development? Is it indigenous to the area in which it is rooted and in the company of other trees just like it? Or has the tree been transplanted from another place, another climate, or another context? Would I see this tree differently if I were different—for instance, if I were not a man but a woman, or if I were not oriented toward an individual tree but rather saw this tree in relation to all other trees in the area or that had ever been? Am I stretching this metaphor too far?
I wonder what metaphor for working with couples and families you could generate. I also wonder whether the metaphor will be the same or different when you finish reading the various theories presented in this book. Imagining is not such a bad way to start any journey. What do you imagine couples and family practice might be like?
The Systems Perspective
Perhaps the most difficult adjustment counselors living in Western cultures make is adopting a systems perspective, which goes against all of the values and experiences associated with individualism, autonomy, independence, and free choice. In the more collectivist cultures of Asia, interdependence, family embeddedness and connectedness, hierarchies of relationship, and multigenerational—even an-cestral—perspectives inform daily experiences and cultural views: A systems perspective seems normal there. Yet even in Western cultures—indeed, in all parts of the world—humans are born into families, and most people spend their lives in one form of family or