Читать книгу The Intercultural Exeter Couples Model - Reenee Singh - Страница 8

The IEM gives practitioners a systemic‐behavioral way to focus on the cultural context of a couple's life, and a method to bring in this necessary focus of so many couples today.

This version of the EM, as in the original one, does not assume pathology within the interactions, nor make an assumption of pathology about the inherent difficulties in uniting different cultures. Instead, it assumes these differences are often unwitting but that they can maintain problems. It highlights the cultural differences so that they can be brought into focus. This is so couples can name and recognize and empathize with each other about the unique challenges that these differences bring. These reside within a cultural context in which there may be differing values and beliefs that bring about different expectations around behaviors within life together. They may also reflect variations within the couple's background and actual cultural conditions—for instance, around sociopolitical differences and economic inequality. It is imperative, given these potentially powerful differences, that therapists be able to help a couple unearth how they affect interactional processes.

However, it is also imperative that therapists know how to guard against the opposite problem of not attending, unearthing, and understanding: pathologizing—that is, to guard against assuming that whatever the problem is, it is always related to intercultural/interfaith differences.