Couples Therapy

The first half of the initial session of Couples Therapy is held conjoint with the couple presenting their concerns. After this the individual spouses are seen individually but separately to allow each spouse to express his/her perceptions, feelings, experience, interpretation of the problem, until both are ready to sit together at a later time to work on the problem together. Marital issues that Dr. E has worked on in the past include spouse abuse, infidelity, living with in-laws, cross-cultural marriages, and more subtle communication and relationship issues brought to attention due to a child’s acting out behavior. His commitment to work through their issues in the process of therapy is essential to success but has also been challenging for them to maintain.

Individual issues concerning marriage and parenting are explored and addressed. Thus, while the couple’s current concerns are in the here and now, each spouse’s experience of growing up in his/her own family of origin is worked through wherever necessary, through a psychoanalytic approach. The objective in this phase of the couples therapy is for the spouses to individually explore their role definitions and expectations, needs and drives pertaining to marriage and family life, and personal mythology that they have carried into their marriages. When the couple is ready for conjoint work, they are brought together into session with the therapist. From past experience this phase has taken anywhere between one session and three months individual work.

In conjoint work each spouse is first asked to summarize his/her personal experience and perception of the problem. In an open and safe atmosphere during subsequent conjoint sessions, couples are facilitated to engage each other in a highly interactive manner, listening and sharing each spouse’s subjective world and the rules and roles that have evolved between the couple. Some tools used are the MBTI to clarify and address relationship issues involving the spouses’ style and preferences, and Psychogenetics to get a bird’s eye-view of where the spouses are coming from.

From the theoretical standpoint, Dr. E’s therapeutic approach in working with couples is eclectic, drawing from Minuchin’s structural theory, Bowen’s eight interlocking concepts, and Satir’s communication styles in marriage and family therapy. In addition, Jung’s attention to soul and enchantment in intimate systems is heeded in the approach. The basic skills in dialogue—active listening, giving and receiving feedback, and negotiation—are exercised in sessions and built upon to complement or enhance the couple’s communication style and patterns thus far. Techniques include Gestalt methods in bringing out the polarities present in each spouse, their differences in their respective “language of love” or modes of expression of affection and other emotions, and possible blockages in their “cycles of experience.”

When necessary to help relieve or cope with marital stress, relaxation techniques from the Chinese martial arts of Ta’i Chi and Qi Gong are utilized. If indicated, hypnotherapy is also attempted to aid in problem exploration and creative visualization of resources and solutions. The main bias that Dr. E carries is a commitment to preserving the marriage and exhausting all possible means to achieve this. Should the couple decide to separate, he believes in the value of clearly understanding why, so that the spouses can proceed with their respective lives with solid, practical learnings and insights that can help them avoid similar pitfalls in future relationships.

Sessions last an hour to an hour-and-a-half, ideally scheduled weekly during the individual concurrent phase, and every two weeks to a month for conjoint sessions. With each case being unique, Dr. E has seen couples for a duration ranging from a single session to a period of two years, with varied results and degrees of success.