Treating Couples - Paperback

by Hilda Kessler (Editor)

A Volume in the Jossey-Bass Library of Current Clinical Technique

Therapists who want to work skillfully with couples are often confronted with a confusing array of theories, techniques, and myths. Treating Couples creatively addresses many of these challenging issues while shining a light to help therapists navigate through this confusing maze.
--Ellyn Bader, Ph.D., co-director, The Couples Institute, Menlo Park, California

Treating Couples weeds through the treatment trAnds?and presents a rational framework for assessing which methods will most effectively meet clients' needs and expectations. This is an accessible guide for the wide range of professionals who practice couples therapy. Treating Couples promotes the clinical functions of evaluation, assessment, judgment, and hypothesis-formation and testing and will serve as an invaluable resource for determining which approaches are the most ethical, flexible, and creative for the effective treatment of couples.

Front Jacket

Therapists who work with couples are constantly presented with an array of new--and often--conflicting theories and clinical techniques. At the same time, their clients are being bombarded with advice from talk show "experts" and self-help books that promote the latest relationship fads. This glut of disinformation encourages unrealistic ideas of what to expect from intimate relationships. How can clinicians maintain their professional edge and meet the challenge of the constantly shifting needs and expectations of their clients?Treating Couples is an accessible guide for the wide range of professionals who practice couples therapy, including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and marriage and family and pastoral counselors. Written by experts in the field, Treating Couples promotes the clinical functions of evaluation, assessment, judgment, and hypothesis-formation and testing and will serve as an invaluable resource for determining which approaches are the most ethical, flexible, and creative for the effective treatment of couples.

Back Jacket

Therapists who work with couples are constantly presented with an array of new and often conflicting theories and clinical techniques. At the same time, their clients are being bombarded with advice from talk show ?experts? and self-help books that promote the latest relationship fads.Treating Couples weeds through the treatment trAnds?and presents a rational framework for assessing which methods will most effectively meet clients' needs and expectations.Written by experts in the field, this book promotes the value of clinical evaluation, judgment, hypothesis formation and testing as the foundation for determining ethical, flexible and creative therapeutic methods. The contributors provide specific guidance for working through each developmental stage in a couple's life cycle and offer clear-cut techniques for overcoming blame, confusion and misunderstanding. Treating Couples is an accessible guide for the wide range of professionals who practice couples therapy, including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, marriage and family counselors, and pastoral ministers.

Author Biography

HILDA KESSLER is a practicing clinician who specializes in couples therapy and couples groups. Currently, she is on the clinical faculty of the Wright Institute, Berkeley, California. She has been a lecturer at San Francisco State University and San Jose State University.