Susan M. Johnson - Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Series Editor: Natalie H. Gilman

The Brunner-Routledge Basic Principles into Practice Series is designed to presentin a series of concisely written, easily understandable volumesthe basic theory and clinical principles associated with a variety of disciplines and types of therapy. These volumes will serve not only as refreshers for practicing therapists, but also as basic texts for the college and graduate level.

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy SecondEdition: Creating Connection

Susan M. Johnson, Ed.D.

Manual for Clinical Psychology Trainees, Third Edition

James P. Choca, Ph.D. and Eric J. Van Denburg, Ph.D.

Clinical Social Work: Definition, Practice, and Vision

Rachelle A. Dorfman, Ph.D.

The Spectrum of Child Abuse: Assessment, Treatment, and Prevention

Kim R. Oates, M.D.

Psychosomatic Disorders: Theoretical and Clinical Aspects

Ghazi Asaad, M.D.

Therapy with Stepfamilies

Emily B. Vishner, Ph.D. and John S. Vishner, M.D.

Psychotherapeutic Metaphors: A Guide to Theory and Practice

Philip Barker

Essentials of Hypnosis

Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D.

Understanding Mental Disorders Due to Medical Conditions or Substance Abuse: What Every Therapist Should Know

Ghazi Asaad, M.D.

Essentials of Psychoanalysis

Herbert S. Strean, D.S.W.

Family Therapy: Fundamentals of Theory and Practice

William A. Griffin, Ph.D.

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Creating Connection

Second Edition

Susan M. Johnson

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Copyright 2004 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Susan M.
The practice of emotionally focused couple therapy : creating
connection / Susan M. Johnson.2nd ed.
p.: cm.(Basic principles into practice series)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-415-94568-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Marital psychotherapy. 2. Focused expressive psychotherapy.
3. Emotions. I. Title. II. Series.
(DNLM: 1. Couples Therapy.WM 430.5.M3 J69p 2004]
RC488.5.J59 2004
616.89 1562dc22 2004002316

ISBN 0-203-84387-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-94568-2 (Print Edition)

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This book isdedicated, like the first edition, to my
generous and loving partner, John Palmer Douglas
the love of my life.

I told you so. Almost ten years ago, I wrote the foreword tothe first edition of The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, and predicted that this book and the method of therapy it describes would lead the field of couple therapy back to a saner and more human view of treating troubled intimate relationshipsand it has.

Not that this was such a brilliant prediction on my part, asall the signs pointed in that direction. Object relations approaches to couple therapy began to be resurrected and refined about a decade and a half ago, and rekindled an interest in the inner lives of intimate partners that had been sorely lacking for the first three decades in the history of family therapy (Gurman & Fraenkel, 2002). But object relations theory, as compelling and powerful as I personally find it to be in helping understand marital problems (Gurman, 2002), had never quite become mainstream in the MFT field, partly because ofits unfortunate association with the earlier psychoanalytic thinking that the pioneers of family therapy so completely eschewed, and partly, maybe mostly, because of its cumbersome language and inaccessibility to most clinicians.

During roughly the same period that object relations therapy with couples was staging a comeback, behavioral approaches were in their heyday, and seemed to offer a genuinely teachable, researchable, and rational alternative. Unfortunately for these approaches, the data seemed to indicate that their effects were neither as likely nor as lasting as had been hoped. Researchers tried to explain what was missing from typical behavioral intervention with couples that seemed to put a ceiling on its helpfulness. Alas, while behavioral methods had seemed to be a rational alternative to the murky psychodynamic (preobject relations) approaches of the preceding several decades of couple therapy, they were, in retrospect, perhaps a bit too rational. That is, observability of behavior and attention to cognitive processes were the dominant characteristics of these ways of working with couples, but affect took a backseat. Not that it had to. There was absolutely no reasonand there still is no reason, from a behavioral and social learning theory perspectivenot to attend to affect, even highlight it, in couple therapy. As behavior therapists started to recognize the limitations of their methods for bringing about change in couple relationships, they gradually incorporated more acceptance-ori-ented interventions, most of which, in my view, were inch-ing closer and closer to modern psychodynamic styles and, interestingly, to the style of EFT therapiststhat is, of Sue Johnson and her colleagues. Behavior therapy with couples had confronted its affect phobia and been desensitized! But behavior therapy no longer merely did not fear affect; it actually embraced affect. Why? Because, as EFT theorists had been saying all along, it is emotion that organizes attachment bonds, and, after all, long-term, committed relationships are about attachment.

There is nothing more fundamental, undeniable, and human about intimate relationships than attachment bond-ing. Attachment is not some saccharine idea dreamed up by feel-good humanists, as I think some people believe. It is a scientifically substantiated basis for understanding human relatedness, with deep-lying roots in modern neuroscience as well as modern family psychology (Lewis, Amini & Lannon, 2000). Attachment theory allows an appreciation of the inevitable interaction between the inner and outer lives of people that is truly integrative and systemic. Not