2010 - The Practice of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy by Kanter Tsai & Kohlenberg

Author:Kanter, Tsai & Kohlenberg
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

136 A.S. Gurman et al.

pattern of which they had been unaware); or (c) her providing direction for behavior change that is consistent with their goals for therapy.

The therapist’s need to respond differentially to individuals in establishing the early therapeutic alliance is hardly a novel proposition. What makes this self- evident principle more complex in couple therapy is that Partners A and B of the same couple may (functionally speaking) require different experiences to feel that a positive client–therapist relationship is developing, especially early in therapy.

The FAP couple therapist works to establish himself early on as a caring provider of general noncontingent reinforcement. But since couple therapy is typically quite brief (Gurman, 2001) and there is often a significant discrepancy between the partners’ levels of readiness to change, he usually must incorporate some change-oriented interventions early in therapy. Doing so will help to strengthen the therapeutic alliance.

Using the Five Rules of FAP with Couples

Rule 1. Watch for CRBs. Often in couple therapy CRBs are easily observed, especially CRB1s early in therapy. But because couple therapy is a three-person situation, many CRB1s occur in more subtle and disguised ways than in individual therapy dyads, making them harder to detect, mostly because there are multiple con- tingencies controlling the behavior. For example, an emotionally distant husband who shows great difficulty with affective expression to his wife (who complains about this), tries to follow the rule of “being more open” in therapy by engaging in relatively more self-disclosing chitchat with the therapist, perhaps about something they have in common, e.g., sports. This could be a CRB2, speaking more about his feelings and thoughts (which the therapist may want to support/reinforce), but its competing, and maybe stronger, function may be to “kill time” in the session as a temporary avoidance (CRB1) of direct conversation with his partner. It also may function to induce the therapist to feel more warmly toward him (e.g., two men talking about sports) in the hope that the therapist will “feel” for him more subsequently and protect him (therapist-reinforced CRB1) when he is feeling more affectively dysregulated, and perhaps the therapist may even punish his wife when she challenges her husband to talk to her more openly. Since maintaining balanced therapeutic alliances with both partners is a common strategic challenge throughout therapy for couple therapists of any theoretical orientation, being mindful of trying to draw in the less-motivated partner may ironically reinforce that partner’s CRB1 (e.g., avoidance of experiencing and expressing emotion). In fact, in the emotion- ally intense atmosphere that often occurs in couple therapy, trying to engage the less-motivated partner may even interfere with the therapist’s likelihood of observ- ing/noticing the avoidance-reinforcing function of the partner’s behavior. Moreover, in the example above, the husband’s football banter may actually constitute a CRB1 rather than a CRB2 by virtue of its power to engage with the therapist more, but in a predictably safe way.

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