An outgrowth of an Harvard Medical School Couple Therapy Conference, this is the first book on couple and family therapy to combine a range of clinical theories with a single case discussion. At the conference, Jim Framo, Peggy Papp, Norman Paul, and Carlos Sluzki--therapists well-known for their differing styles and theoretical persuasions--described and explained the sessions they each conducted with the same couple. These sessions varied greatly: each has a distinctive focus; two included family of origin members; one involved a co-therapist. Later, other therapists, representing an even broader range of perspectives, discussed their viewpoints and speculated how they might have approached the same case. In ONE COUPLE, FOUR REALITIES: MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON COUPLE THERAPY, the experience of attending this conference is recreated and expanded. The reader is first given the same background information about the couple that was supplied to the interviewers and is then presented with edited transcripts and commentary by Framo, Papp, Paul, and Sluzki about their own sessions. Further perspectives and approaches to the case are provided by a number of other teachers of therapy. Thus, the reader is invited to view the couple from over a dozen different perspectives, including psychodynamic, object relations, systemic, behavioral, feminist, contextual, and eclectic orientations. Perhaps the most fascinating perspective is provided by the couple, Larry'' and Jennifer,'' who, in the last section of the book, detail their reactions to the four demonstration sessions. Their stunningly candid and intelligent accounts, given soon after the original interviews, and then again six years later, provide a compelling conclusion to the book. Most published cases are selected retrospectively to illustrate the power of the author's approach. By contrast, this couple was selected in advance: their case, ongoing at the time in a Boston clinic, seemed suitable for the demonstration int
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