Couple Therapy:: Dramas Of Love And Sex
Barbara Bloomfield
Language: English
Pages: 184
ISBN: 0335263364
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This graphic novel, with extra therapist's notes, allows you to sit in as three fictional couples enter the counselling room.
experienced practitioners will take away a great deal of learning from this new resource, and I hope that some readers will be inspired to take the first step towards training with Relate to make up our workforce of the future. Ruth Sutherland, CEO of Relate 1 Hello Colston and Chimi. What’s brought you here today? TH E WA R M TH O F ST R A N GE R S Well, we’ve known each other for, er, 15 weeks and five days … … And she’s nearly four months’ pregnant 2 Couple Therapy The doctors said
to bring the conversation back to HIM! I’d like to leave now You feel left out? What thoughts were coming up as I spoke to Chimi? Err... What’s the point of being here, ignored More worryingly, with the attention on Chimi’s story, Colston has switched off, indicating his lack of ability to hold and contain her feelings. In his discomfort, he commit the communications ‘sin’ of starting to talking about himself while his partner is trying to say something painful. The Warmth of Strangers 19
twisting and plaiting my sisters’ hair. It was very calming Would you like to try it now? What, hairdressing? 30 Couple Therapy You both look relaxed, is this something you do at home? Never. Is it OK to talk about sex, Col? Since the baby started to show, Colston doesn’t want to make love If you must I don’t want to hurt the baby Enactment, according to Jorge Colapinto (1981), is the way: “the therapist introduces disruption in the existent patterns.” This couple finds it hard to soothe
this is Portia June-Rose Some couples counsellors prefer not to have young children in the room because they find it distracting. As a family counsellor, unless the conversation is inappropriate for them to hear, I prefer to see how the partners negotiate their couplehood in front of their children – and I enjoy the lightness, warmth and fun that having babies and children in the room brings to the sessions. 61 TH E WA R M T H OF S TR A N GE R S Commentary by Professor Rudi Dallos and
important to pay attention to cultural differences but not to be over-organised by them. I sometimes get a bit impatient when 62 Couple Therapy therapists get overly cultural because you can lose sight of fundamental relationship dynamics. So how do YOU balance similarities and difference? One of our black trainee counsellors did research on the white therapist/black client question and she found there was a conspiracy of silence. She found she would be waiting for the counsellor to