A psychobiological approach to couple therapy utilizes a bottom-up versus a top-down approach to psychotherapy. This means that the couple’s therapist utilizes very fast, often surprising interventions in order to access implicit systems as revealed in micro expressions and micro-movements in the face and body, respectively. This workshop will introduce several exciting bottom-up techniques to use in couple therapy, including the use of surprise statements, movements, poses, and music.
In this workshop, we will look at fantasy as an ingenious way our creative mind overcomes all sorts of relational and intra psychic conflicts around desire and intimacy. Therapists can help clients develop a view of fantasy as a narrative that creates a safe space to experience the pleasure that can invigorate their loving relation-ships. They will decipher the meaning of sexual fantasies, approaching them more as dreams or complex symbolic structures than as literal narratives of secret intentions.
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$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Ever since Freud’s patient dubbed psychoanalysis a “talking cure,” most forms of therapy include someone talking to a professional. This workshop posits that therapy consists not so much in the action of talking but in the experience of how one is listened to while they talk, and that the more accurate name for successful therapy is the “listening cure.”
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$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Remarried couples are often poorly served by therapists who treat them without enough appreciation for the unique complexity and multiple loyalties of stepfamily life. This workshop will combine clinical assessment and treatment issues with a special focus on values issues, such as commitment and fairness that often dominate conflict in stepfamilies.
Couples come to therapy saying “we can’t communicate.” It sounds simple. Yet what does this really mean? Closer examination often reveals trauma, chronic hostility, narcissistic entitlement, or long-term conflict avoidance. And resolution requires internal self-development that may be resisted by one or both partners. This advanced workshop will use video segments to demonstrate the intricacies of resolving predictable communication breakdowns and supporting couples development.
Based on Perel’s Mating in Captivity, this bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of aliveness and vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality and consider how the need for secure attachment and closeness can co-exist with the quest for individuality and freedom.
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$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Based on research, Gottman will discuss his new theory of how to conceptualize “trust” and “betrayal” using interdependence game theory. Trust and betrayal metrics here are not personality traits, but characteristics of daily interaction processes. He will present practical flowcharts for how couples build trust and loyalty, versus how couples build distrust and betrayal. The social skill of “emotional attunement” will be described precisely. A new therapy for preventing distrust and betrayal, and a therapy for healing from betrayal will be presented. Concepts will be illustrated with video-tape and transcripts from actual cases.
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$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
CC12 Topical Panel 01 - Infidelity: What is the Essence of the Crisis for the Couple? What are the Challenges for the Therapist? - Ellyn Bader, PhD, Helen Fisher, PhD, John Gottman, PhD, and Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
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$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
CC12 Topical Panel 02 - Bringing Attachment and Neuroscience into Couples Therapy: Benefits, Challenges, and Pitfalls - Rick Hanson, PhD, Harville Hendrix, PhD, Stan Tatkin, PsyD, and Scott Woolley, PhD
Anthropologist Helen Fisher uses her brain scanning studies (fMRI) of people happily in love, rejected in love and in love long-term to discuss the traits of romantic love, love-at-first-sight, and addiction to love. She focuses on her current research on 40,000 men and women to propose that four broad cognitive/behavioral personality trait constellations have evolved associated with the neural systems for dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen. Then she discusses her data on mate choice among 28,000 individuals to pro-pose why we are chemically drawn to one person rather than another.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00