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NP0038: Who’s Afraid of Couples Therapy?

Welcome to our “Who’s Afraid of Couples Therapy?” This exciting series, back by popular demand, is based on our November/December 2011 issue on this topic and will explore the challenges of couples work. What are the most effective strategies in working with couples? How can therapists structure therapy—particularly in the early sessions—so that couples leave with a sense of hope, rather than frustration? Can working with individuals who have serious issues in their relationships actually be detrimental to them? Find out the answers to these questions and much more. In this first session with expert couples therapists Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, the creators of the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, you’ll find out why clinicians often avoid working with couples and how you can better prepare yourself for couples therapy work. How can therapists most effectively work with emotion in the consulting room—particularly when it comes to couples therapy? Learn with internationally known couples therapist Hedy Schleifer how to help create a nourishing connection between partners, define a role as therapist-as-guide, and much more. Schleifer, who’s pioneered the training of Imago Relationship therapists internationally, will go into how to use this theory in practice and how to best work with emotions. What happens when partners in couples therapy have two different agendas in mind? Hear from expert William Doherty on this little spoken about topic. Learn how Discernment Counseling, an approach that helps couples clarify their feelings about the next step in their relationship, can help both clients and therapists. Is it possible to rebuild trust and intimacy in a couple’s relationship after a partner has had an affair? How can therapists help? Hear from Esther Perel, author of the international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, on how to help couples after an infidelity and the role that cultural perspectives have in this emotional situation. Explore this classic dynamic of couples therapy—an angry woman and a withdrawn man—that’s often confusing for therapists, with couples therapist Jette Simon. Learn more about what’s behind the feelings of anger and the behavior of withdrawing, and how clinicians can more effectively work with shame and fear of disconnection. Hear an unconventional perspective on couples therapy from David Schnarch, who believes that the best way to help couples is to challenge partners to change their individual behaviors and attitudes. Schnarch’s direct, upfront approach to helping clients will illustrate a different viewpoint on effective couples therapy. Join Marty Klein, a marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist, us for a candid discussion about the assumptions that both clients and therapists often share that can get in the way of improving couples’ sexual relationships. Discover with Kathryn Rheem how to respond effectively when clients express strong feelings in session. Based on Emotionally Focused Therapy, you’ll explore attunement and how to use your own emotions to help clients move beyond attachment injuries. After the session, please let us know what you think. If you ever have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org.

Whole Psychiatry: Alternatives to Conventional Psychopharmacology with Robert Hedaya

Meds: Myths and Realities: NP0035 – Session 4

Is psychopharmacology is a 'go-to' in your practice? Join Robert Hedaya as he discusses how to treat the bodily systems that underlay many mental health issues while avoiding medication. After the session, please let us know what you think. If you ever have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org.

Treating the Mixed-Agenda Couple

Bill Doherty On An Approach For Unaligned Relationships

Tough Customers: Is It Them or Us?

Tough CustomersBy Rich Simon As therapists, many of us practice in two different worlds. In the first, we see polite, well-behaved, articulate clients with solid values. They engage fully in therapy, talk cogently about their problems, listen attentively to our responses, make reasonably good-faith efforts to follow our suggestions, and sooner or later get better. No wonder we genuinely like these people!

Does This Kid Need Medication? with Ron Taffel

Meds: Myths and Realities: NP0035 – Session 3

Do you feel like you could be a more effective therapist with your younger clients? Do you find it hard to determine when interventions--psychological and pharmacological--might be needed? Join Ron Taffel and learn to identify key diagnostic signs that indicate medications could be helpful when dealing with depression, anxiety, AD/HD, and affective disorders. After the session, please let us know what you think. If you ever have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org.
Networker Excel Clubs
Covering the Field

The Best Networker Covers of the Past Quarter-Century

One of the livelier Networker rituals is our bimonthly production meeting, at which we decide about the cover art that we hope will capture the spirit and content of the issue's main theme. We're always seeking an image that offers a compelling snapshot of a trend, a controversy, or a new development shaping the trajectory of practice. Here are the editors' selections for the all-time Top 10 Networker covers. We chose them for their ability to bring a particular issue to visual life, but they can be read as a thumbnail history of the major currents and stories of the last 25 years.

The Creative Leap September/October 1984
Much of the focus of the early Networker was the fascination with the consulting-room theatricality of figures like Salvador Minuchin, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and Carl Whitaker. For many readers, this cover image captured the prospect of a career devoted to creativity that drew so many young therapists into the field in the '70s and early '80s

S.O.S. for Private Practice January/February 1987
By the mid-1980s, reality began to settle in as the expansive Golden Age of Private Practice reached its limits and a new streamlined, cost-conscious health care system took its place. Many practitioners found their daily professional lives—and incomes—transformed.

The Constructivists Are Coming! September/ October 1988
In the late 1980s, postmodernism and the epistemological position that what we once thought of as "objective reality" doesn't exist apart from the perceiver's construction of it came to the psychotherapy field, as it did to many other academic disciplines. This cover takes a lighthearted view of what could sometimes become a ponderous discussion.

The Shadow of a Doubt September/October 1993
Therapists found their profession in the glare of public controversy when a group called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation accused some abuse-obsessed practitioners of conducting a witch hunt against innocent parents. The debate shrouded the field in Kafkaesque eeriness.

The Last Word May/June 1995
The image of DSM-IV as the Holy Book of psychiatry was perfect for our exploration of how the DSM enterprise brought coherence to a remedicalized psychiatry and came to serve as an essential, legitimizing tool for the managed care industry.

All Talked Out? September/October 1996
With some help from Rene Magritte, this cover depicts the growing interest in moving beyond therapeutic chat as the
primary tool in the consulting room and incorporating some mind-body alternatives into standard practice.

Our Technology, Our Selves March/April 2001
The first issue of the newly christened Psychotherapy Networker was the first to explore the growing impact of technology on our intimate lives, as therapists began to recognize that our various technical gizmos had become virtual family members.

Brain Therapy September/October 2002
By the end of the Decade of the Brain, neuroscientists had opened up a whole New Frontier for clinical practice. Ever since then, therapists have been trying to integrate an understanding of the brain with traditional practice methods.

Beyond Victimhood July/August 2003
After being vilified for promoting the "abuse excuse," therapists became more cautious about focusing exclusively on the wounded inner child. Without returning to the old conspiracy of silence about dark family transgressions, the field began to recognize that even the most deeply affected survivors have the capacity to transcend their wounds.

21st-Century Teens July/August 2006
With the dawn of a new century, it's become increasingly clear that, in addition to traditional tools, therapists needed to have an anthropologist's interest in the all-pervasive, often overwhelming pop culture to be able to connect with their teen clients.