Читать книгу Theory and Practice of Couples and Family Counseling - James Robert Bitter - Страница 36

 Key figures: Harville Hendrix, Helen HuntSimilar to emotionally focused therapy with couples, imago therapy is built on an understanding of the breaches that occur in attachment and resulting childhood wounds. Hendrix notes that couples will often search through all possible partners who might be good for them to pick someone similar to people with whom they have unfinished business. In so doing, they look to the partner to stretch beyond the limitations of the original wounding relationship. To the extent that each partner can do this, the marriage or coupling becomes a path to wholeness. Imago therapy is built on identifying childhood wounds and then using highly structured dialogues to help the couple connect and fully engage with one another.

As you read these differing approaches to couples and family practice, know that it is impossible to integrate all of them. Some ideas and conceptualizations fit together better than others. It is enormously hard, for example, to see how social constructionist models and structural-strategic models might merge when the roles and functions of the family practitioners are so different. Similarly, it is hard to imagine how experiential models might be integrated with cognitive behavior therapy. But perhaps these last two statements only reflect my lack of imagination. Maybe you will see the thread that can be used to stitch such an integration into your own personal tapestry of family counseling.