Marion Solomon and Stan Tatkin: Love and War in Intimate Relationships: Connection, Disconnection, and Mutual Regulation in Couple Therapy

The explosion of interest in brain research during recent years has left some clinicians with an ambivalence about the therapeutic promise of psychobiology. For these practitioners who are skeptical about the ability of biological research to inform clinical practice, Love and war in intimate relationships (2011) may offer a pleasant surprise. Drawing on their vast clinical experience and expertise, authors Solomon and Tatkin effortlessly demonstrate the utility of a psychobiological approach for therapy with adult couples at all stages in their romantic relationships— from those who are passionately in love to those struggling on the brink of divorce. While firmly grounded in attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology, the work is clinically focused, gently oscillating between poignant vignettes and concise psychobiological interpretation. At the heart of the authors’ approach is the notion that each romantic couple is a regulatory unit. This unit remains the focus of attention throughout the treatment. In other words, it is the couple, not the therapist or individual partners, which becomes a source of reparative healing and earned security for both members of the romantic dyad. Immediately engaging the reader, Part I, ‘‘How love turns to war,’’ presents the vignette of newlyweds Richard and Christine as their relationship turns from premarital bliss into a battlefield, where each warring partner seems convinced they married the wrong person. Emotional disconnection and cycles of dysregulation—glimpses of which were evident during the honeymoon period of their early relationship—dominate, as each partner’s defenses reactivate unhealed attachment wounds in the other. As is often the case for couples who seek treatment, Richard and Christine become locked into patterns of hurtful behavior and miscommunication that bring the affective past of each partner into present through painful dyadic (re)enactments. Like the rest of the book, the three chapters (Chapters 1 through 3) that make up this section are rich with dialogue from intense sessions with the couple at various stages of their treatment. Demonstrating the efficacy of the authors’ approach, things between Richard and Christine improve remarkably quickly as they become increasingly able to tolerate distressing memories, willing to reflect on their collective experience, and skilled at repairing breaches in connection. Rapid change, Solomon and Tatkin show us, is possible in psychobiologically-informed treatment. Part II, ‘‘The psychobiological approach,’’ explores the nuts and bolts of the authors’ paradigm (Chapter 4), while showcasing a number of techniques that therapists can implement in their own practice with couples, irrespective of their theoretical orientation. Of particular interest to psychodynamic practitioners, Solomon and Tatkin make a strong case for the broad utility of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI: George et al. 1985) as not only a historytaking instrument for diagnosis but also an intervention that offers couples an attachment narrative to account for their shared experience of problems in the here-and-now and hope for a healing future together (Chapter 5). In couples therapy, the authors argue, the AAI—like other tools presented by the authors—can serve three purposes: to provoke awareness and change, to confirm or refute the therapist’s working hypothesis about the couple, and to produce an increase or decrease in physiological arousal. Highlighting the importance of the latter, Solomon and Tatkin emphasize the efficiency of movement exercises (Chapter 6) that provoke the couple’s physiological L. K. Noll (&) Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: lkn@uoregon.edu