Emotionally Fcused Couples Therapy

Question 1

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
Main Ideas:
Audio File:18

Answer 1

experiential approach but does not qualify as a Classical School of Family Therapy given its inception taking place in the 1980s. Given its emphasis on the lived experience, integrative nature and late introduction to the field, it fits well within the other Post-Modern approaches.

Primary Contributors

Susan Johnson

Leslie Greenberg

Key Terms & Primary Interventions

Attachment: 
Bonding:  
Interactional Patterns: 
Primary Emotions: 
Primary Needs: 
Secondary Emotions:  
Softening:

Question 2

Attachment:

Answer 2

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
The individual’s basic need for trust and security, significantly influenced and developed throughout infancy and early childhood per the child’s relationship to his or her primary caregiver. Attachment in early childhood influences relationship styles throughout adulthood.

Question 3

Softening:

Answer 3

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
This is displayed when a partner withdraws from defensiveness and/or aggressiveness, and begins to open up to the emotional experience of his or her partner as opposed to remaining exclusively focused on his or her own experience.

Question 4

Primary Needs:

Answer 4

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:

Needs that are related to attachment and experienced through primary emotions.

Question 5

Primary Emotions:

Answer 5

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
Primary Emotions: These referred to underlying emotions that drove relational behavior, but were hardly acknowledged or talked about directly. Primary emotions were the more fundamental emotional experiences such as powerlessness, fear, loneliness, etc..

Question 6

Secondary Emotions:

Answer 6

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
These referred to the surface level emotions intended to protect the primary emotions and reflect more upon the interaction than the individual. Secondary emotions are usually reactive in nature and resemble defensiveness, frustration and anger.

Question 7

Bonding:

Answer 7

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy:
Attachment Theory’s term for the process in which individuals form a connection in a relationship that satisfies one’s primary need for attachment.