Specializing in Sexual Intimacy for Couples Therapy, Essay Example

In “Made to Measure: Adapting Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy to Partners’ Attachment Styles,” authors Johnson and Whiffen present an exacting and comprehensive rationale for employing therapy that is emotionally-focused (EFT) to address intimate issues between couples. The article is both structured well and compelling, in that an initial explanation of EFT, with a careful delineation of the steps involved, is followed by the validation of clinical research. Couples, based on the evidence, greatly benefit from the engagement with emotional experience such therapies provide (Johnson, Whiffen, 1999, p. 369). From here, the work goes on to examine the presence of attachment theory in EFT. While Johnson and Whiffen skillfully segue into communication applications and other components of EFT, attachment is the thrust of the work here, and it reveals the foundational presence of the theory within effective EFT.

That couples in crisis are reacting to emotional elements is virtually indisputable, as the efficacy of a therapy acknowledging and incorporating these emotions is strongly supported. Attachment theory, however, adds an invaluable perspective, simply because it recognizes the emotional dimensions created by the couple as a couple. On one level, and essential to the process, the therapist is the stabilizing factor for all emotional discourse, and for both individual and couple circumstances. Vulnerability is a keynote in such therapies, and trust is necessary: “The structure of the session and the empathic responsiveness of the therapist can reassure anxious partners” (p. 375). Then, the therapist may engage the couple in such a way that barriers to intimacy, often created by attachment levels, are successfully negotiated. The therapy actually induces intimacy through creating new approaches to prior attachment aspects, in acquainting the couple with the realities of these: “In attachment theory, change in relationships is assumed to arise from compelling emotional experiences that disconfirm past fears and biases” (p. 372). Consequently, and as asserted by Johnson and Whiffen, the EFT is employed on multiple levels of experience, to establish different directions in intimacy for the partners.

Much of the same set of strategies may be instrumental in overcoming problems faced by couples wherein one partner is the victim of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Authors MacIntosh and Johnson explore this in “Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples and Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors”, in a manner both scholarly and engaging. Beginning with the powerful assertion that victims of abuse nonetheless exhibit longings for intimate connections, the authors move on to document the established fact that CSA survivors typically suffer from intimacy issues far more frequently than do others, even as the attempts to secure satisfying relationship are just as determined: “CSA survivors display a remarkable longing for relationships with others and for stable attachment relationships’ (MacIntosh, Johnson, 2008, p. 299). The purpose of EFT here, then, is to actually use the sometimes volatile relationship ongoing to eviscerate CSA harm.

The scenario appears somewhat risky, and it is; CSA survivors often are unaware of the nature and extent of their trauma, so discovery of a highly sensitive kind is inherently within this therapeutic process. At the same time, EFT in couples therapy has an enormous advantage here, in that the other partner may be more sensitized to the CSA experience, and consequently develop emotional responses appropriate to that partner’s needs. It is, in a sense, a matter of learning a new, emotional language within the therapy, and one liable to generate highly effective interactions: “Expressing primary underlying feelings of fear, for example, instead of reactive anger, changes the signals to, and evokes new responses from, a partner” (p. 301). Progress toward intimacy, then, may occur at an exponential rate, as each partner learns and reacts to the emotional realities of the other, which are both revealed and evolving. More importantly, the EFT, under the supervision of an empathetic therapist, is addressing core issues likely long suppressed and/or adapted by the CSA victim. As this occurs with the assistance and emotional support of the partner, it may be that couples therapy based on EFT techniques will prove to be the most effective therapy for all CSA survivors. As MacIntosh and Johnson note, the therapist may provide a bridge upon which the CSA victim may relate trauma to the partner, and thus ease it (p. 312). It is difficult to conceive of a more beneficial mode of treatment, in enhancing intimacy levels when CSA is concerned.

References

Johnson, Susan M., & Whiffen, Valerie E. “Made to Measure: Adapting Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy to Partners’ Attachment Styles” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Dec. 1999): pp. 366-381. Print.

MacIntosh, Heather B., & Johnson, Susan. “Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples and Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Vol. 34, No. 3 (July 2008): pp. 298-315. Print.