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Dec 14

A Focus on Emotion in Marriage Therapy

By Jay Slupesky
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About Marriage Therapy, Communication

Fuller School of Psychology SignThis week I’m in Pasadena, studying Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT). The workshop is being taught by two of the best-known researchers in the field.

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy is quite different from many other marital therapies. There is no educational aspect to it: no lessons in communication skills or conflict management. Also, there is no behavioral aspect to it (such as trying to do more nice things for your spouse).

The three stages of EFT are:

  1. De-escalate the conflict cycle.
  2. Changing interactional positions (such as softening blame and getting the withdrawn partner to re-engage).
  3. Consolidate and Integrate.

EFT has done very well in effectiveness testing with real couples.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 6:34 am and is filed under About Marriage Therapy, Communication.

One Response to “A Focus on Emotion in Marriage Therapy”

  1. Faith and Love in Marriage Therapy | A Marriage Therapist's Blog Says:
    January 5th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    [...] did ask me, but I went ahead and told me that I was a practicing Catholic. I also mentioned that Emotionally Focused Therapy, which is the mode of marital therapy that I favor, is well-known in Christian circles and is [...]

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