Excellent material
I am a Marriage and Family Therapist, always in the search for new and effective material. This is a wonderful find. After reading this theory I see couples and their issues in a new light.
Well Structured and Useful Book For Couples Therapists
Bringing insecure attachment dialogues to life is the most useful aspect of this book. The step by step approach to couples therapy is helplful especially for those therapists unfamiliar with how attachment issues play out in the therapeutic context.
More information on screeening out couples who may not benefit from this approach would have been invaluable - rather than just referring to couples who are breaking up. Many couples have not learned the language of emotion. Some express it somatically or by numbing it with substances or food. These couples would need far more than 12 sessions and a great deal of training and practice to be able to learn about their attachment dances and break the cycles that lead to distancing.
Insight is not the primary aim of EFCT, yet couples are encouraged to notice and become increasingly aware of their automatic processes that lead to misattuned connections. I think that is precisely what gaining insight is about,which in turn allows for new actions to be attempted in the future.
Johnson suggests that most couples therapists use problem solving approaches over emotionally focused strategies. Those of us who bring in Object Relations and Intersubjective ideas into our work facilitate couples in attending to and sharing their emotional experiences with their partners. This is the norm rather than the exception. Johnson's book makes the process more systematic and contained. It doesn't help with couples where one or both partners get secondary gains from making the other 'bad.'
Overall a useful adjunct for psychotherapists already doing emotionally focused work with couples.
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Excellent overview of approach
Ms. Johnson offer a clear and concise overview of this approach for couples. Well worth the reading.
Easy to read and understand
This is my first book by Johnson and I found it to be easy to read and understand. Johnson's approach is based on attachment theory which I have found to be a good anchor in working with couples that want to resolve conflict and/or strengthen their bond.
A Seminal Work in Couples' Therapy
Susan Johnson's work through Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a great asset to the world of relationship therapies. Her work is in the new direction in therapy - calculated integration versus muddle-headed eclecticism.
Johnson's work carefully integrate structural family therapy (Minuchin) with attachment theory (Bowlby) and the experiential therapies. While mainly citing Rogers, this a misnomer. EFT is more Satir and Whitaker than Rogers as the therapist is active and directive as well as short-term to brief in her or his interventions. Rogers is a long-term personality-altering insight therapy, which offers little for today's reality of shorter time constraints whether through managed-care or government stipulations.
Better yet, EFT is an EBT (evidence-based treatment)! I believe it has a 70-73% efficacy rate for couple improvement and therefore is more ameniable to third-party reimbursement. EFT is also a great approach for PTSD (see Johnson, 2002) as in 33-38 sessions a full-blown PTSD sufferer can have significant improvement. This is because the partner, not the therapist, becomes the soother for the traumatized person and is much more available in the long-term for the PTSD sufferer. I believe the Department of Veteran's Affairs needs to "perk-up" and "pony-up" for EFT as the treatment of choice for our soon-to-be onslaught of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom veterans come home.
We are so not prepared for this avalanche of need!
(9 reviews)
