Dan’s Blog

The task in Collaborative Couple Therapy is to construct intimate conversations by helping partners confide their leading-edge feeling, often the one that’s rattling around in their minds making them uneasy (or, as Marshall Rosenberg put it, what’s alive for them at the moment). If they confide this leading-edge feeling—figure it out, put it in words, […]

This is the second of a two-part discussion of the tasks required of a couple therapist and how a collaborative couple therapist accomplishes them. In the previous writeup, I talked about three factors: the management of the session, who talks to whom, and the role of the therapist. Here I want to talk about the […]

As part of a recent workshop, I tried to describe the tasks the couple therapist needs to accomplish and the decisions he or she needs to make. These tasks and decisions include: Management of the session Who talks to whom What roles to take What skills to teach What knowledge to impart In the following, […]

The task in Collaborative Couple Therapy is to become spokesperson for both partners—that is, to help them give voice to what they are struggling with. This task is made harder by our pathology-oriented language, prompting us to stand back in negative judgment rather than appreciate the client’s struggle. Many of the terms used for describing […]

Our picture of the ideal therapeutic stance—the proper way to relate to clients—emerges out of our particular theory of the problem and plan of cure. Classical psychoanalysis sees the curative factor as arising out of the analysand’s projection upon the analyst of crucial unresolved relationship issues from childhood. The proper therapeutic stance, accordingly, is to […]

The goal in Dorothy Kaufmann and my Workshop for Couples is to increase intimacy between partners. With this in mind, we try to help them confide to each other what’s on their minds. Intimacy is saying what’s on your mind and feeling your partner understands. And it’s your partner saying what’s on his or her […]

What do you do when a therapy session you’re conducting goes very badly?  If you’re like me, you imagine what other therapists might do. I might say to myself: I wonder what Carl Rogers would do. Probably sit on the edge of his chair and beam acceptance—as he did in that film with Gloria. That’d […]

COUPLE THERAPY FRAMEWORKS Dan Wile Some therapists have a clearly articulated theory that they apply systematically to every couple they see. At the other end of the spectrum are the therapists who tailor their approach to the couple they’re seeing and may not think of themselves as having much of a theory at all. Every […]

Doubling is the premier way to accomplish the principal task of Collaborative Couple Therapy, which is to turn arguments into conversations and disengagement into engagement. When I double, I kneel next to one of the partners and speak as if I were that person talking to the other partner. I translate that person’s angry, defensive, […]

The task in Collaborative Couple Therapy is to create intimate moments by confiding feelings that induce an intensified sense of connection. Such moments occur when both partners confide the main thing on their minds—what’s alive for them at the moment, as Marshall Rosenberg puts it—and feel the other person understands. Sally: I love the wonderful […]