Experiencing couples therapy: A qualitative investigation of client/therapist perceptions of selected narrative and emotion-focused sessions.
Creators: name: MacCormack, Terry.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 1998
Subjects: subject: Psychology, Clinical.

description: To determine what it is like for therapists and their clients to go through sessions of couples therapy together, the subjective impressions of four couples and two therapists were explored as they engaged in emotion focused (EFT) and narrative approaches to couples work. An open-ended interview procedure called Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) was used to gather the subjective impressions of partners and their therapists following sessions they chose as being especially meaningful or significant. This involved replaying entire videotapes of their selected sessions to gain an account of their perceptions of their meetings. Participants each engaged in three separate IPR interviews. The first followed their initial meeting while the remaining two occurred towards the middle and latter stages of their work. Interviews were also conducted with the couples both before and after their completed course of therapy Results for the partners indicated that their therapy was a highly emotional experience. The couples also highlighted the importance of feeling safe in therapy; the "feeling work" that it entails; the process of exploring and naming experience in therapy; their search for "depth of feeling;" and their view of therapy as not only an "out-of-the-ordinary" experience, but as a space in which to present one's self to the therapist and to one's partner. Results for the therapists indicated that feelings were also central to their experience, although these were used to help them get a "feel" for their couples. Evident as well in their reviews was the privilege they gave to the expression of emotion, which they used to get to "know" the couples, along with the ongoing tension this desire created in them when certain partners appeared to withhold their feelings. Results indicated more similarity than difference in the experiences of couples going through EFT and narrative sessions of therapy. How males and females saw their sessions also revealed similarities, although men seemed generally to find couples therapy a more uncomfortable setting than did their female counterparts. The study served to generate a "theory" or a way of looking at couples therapy that emerged out of what participants said about their experience. Their research interviews suggested that the heart of the change process in couples therapy is the relationship therapists and clients collaborate to create. This takes place as partners begin to open up to the therapist, who identifies with or internalizes each of them and in so doing enters their experiential world. This occurs when partners feel understood by the therapist on an emotional level, which in turn leads them to feel safe to "tune in" to each other's experience as well. In the process, they become engaged in identifying with their partner and in allowing their partner to identify with them as well. Partners leave therapy with a more genuine appreciation of what it is like to "be" the other. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)