On Intimate Ground: A Gestalt Approach to Working with Couples

by Wheeler; Gordon

• ISBN13: 9780881632644
• ISBN10: 0881632643
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-01-01
• Publisher: Gestalt Press

Summary

Couples therapy has long been regarded as one of the most demanding forms of psychotherapy because of the way it challenges therapists to combine the insights of dynamic psychology with the power and clarity of systems dynamics. In this exciting new volume, Gordon Wheeler and Stephanie Backman, couples therapists with broad training and long years of experience, present dramatic new approaches that at last integrate the dynamic/self-organizational and the systemic/behavioral schools of thought. Building on the insights of Gestalt psychology and psychotherapy, the authors show us how a truly phenomenological approach, based on the clients' own experience and goals, holds the key to a dramatic increase in therapeutic power and flexibility. The fifteen engaging chapters demonstrate the application of this approach to issues of intimacy, self-construction, power and abuse, "resistance," growth, and shame - and to such diverse and challenging populations as abuse survivors and their partners, remarried couples, gay and lesbian couples, and couples with "personality" or "character" disorders. In the process, the authors offer a fresh perspective that will serve to re-energize the couples therapist's work in this challenging area. On Intimate Groundcontributes new insights to many of the most timely and provocative questions in the field today.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Gestalt Model in Context
The Editors
The Contributors
Introduction	p. 1
The Tasks of Intimacy: Reflections on a Gestalt Approach to Working with Couples	p. 31
Contact and Choice: Gestalt Work with Couples	p. 60
Self-Organization and Dialogue	p. 83
Processes of Experiential Organization in Couple and Family Systems	p. 109
Therapy with Remarried Couples	p. 128
Gestalt Couples Therapy with Gay Male Couples: Enlarging the Therapeutic Ground of Awareness	p. 166
Gestalt Couples Therapy with Lesbian Couples: Applying Theory and Practice to the Lesbian Experience	p. 188
Working with the Remarried Couple System	p. 210
The Gestalt Couples Group	p. 229
Trauma Survivors and Their Partners: A Gestalt View	p. 243
Couples' Shame: The Unaddressed Issue	p. 262
Intimacy and Power in Long-Term Relationships: A Gestalt Therapy-Systems Perspective	p. 291
The Grammar of Relationship: Gestalt Couples Therapy	p. 309
Giving and Receiving	p. 325
The Aesthetics of Gestalt Couples Therapy	p. 356
Epilogue: The Aesthetic Lens	p. 400
Index	p. 408
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