1st Edition
Positive Couple Therapy Using We-Stories to Enhance Resilience
Positive Couple Therapy: Using We-Stories to Enhance Resilience
Positive Couple Therapy provides simple and practical instruction for reclaiming positive stories that can catalyze hope in relationships that have become stressed and strained. The authors weave together cutting edge thinking and research in attachment theory, narrative therapy, neuroscience, and adult development, as well as their own research and clinical experience to present vivid case histories, step-by-step strategies, exercises, questionnaires, and interview techniques. They cover a range of contemporary couple experiences: couples in conflict, LGBT partnerships, deployed and discharged military couples, and couples at various points across the life span. The authors’ unique Me (to US) Scale, a 10-item tool that assesses the degree of mutuality a couple possesses at the start of treatment, gives therapists of any theoretical orientation the ability to put this intervention to immediate use.
Chapter 2: Stories Are Us
Chapter 3: Moving from “I” to “We” (or “Me” to “Us”)
Chapter 4: Positive Love Stories: How to Craft the “Good Enough” Couple Story
Chapter 5: Stories that Hurt
Chapter 6: Stories across Time
Chapter 7: Expanding the Story Circle
Chapter 8: Giving Our Stories Away
Biography
Jefferson A. Singer is the Elizabeth H. Faulk Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College and a clinical psychologist in private practice.
Karen Skerrett is a staff member at the Family Institute/Center for Applied Psychological Studies at Northwestern University and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University.
"Jefferson Singer and Karen Skerrett have done a great favor for couples and couples therapists. Our whole society needs a lot less focus on "me" and a lot more emphasis on "We." Perhaps the best parts of the book are the stories--the authors use illustrations from their own lives in addition to tales of couples who find meaning in the relationships they create together."--Gene Combs M.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago. Co-Author of Narrative Therapy: The social construction of preferred realities and Narrative Therapy with Couples.
"Positive Couple Therapy forges a creative, dynamic marriage: excellent scholarship and real-world tools. It offers an accessible, practical guide for helping couples reclaim their stories of togetherness. Beyond that, it inspires all of us to re-discover and share the precious crystals of personal memory that reflect our deepest love; to learn how to make the subtle but daring shift to not only being me, but being ‘We.’"--Susan Bluck, Ph.D., University of Florida
"Singer and Skerrett have written a wonderful book about working with less distressed couples that accentuates building and drawing on a sense of "We." This book artfully integrates positive psychology, narrative practice, and an often ignored thread of research that unequivocally points to the value a sense of "We" has in couple satisfaction and individual happiness. Full of wonderful life stories and case examples, Singer and Skerrett point to how couples can actively cultivate and grow their We-Stories and thus their relationships."--Jay Lebow, Ph.D., ABPP, Clinical Professor, Family Institute at Northwestern