Couple's Therapy

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Couple's psychotherapy is a confidential weekly meeting with the psychologist where couples come to discuss problems they are having in their relationship, and to discuss ways to improve communication, fidelity, trust, candor, understanding, and to resolve conflict, differences, and dilemmas.   Couples relationships can range from friends, roommates, intimate partners, married/life partners, or even divorced couples.  The focus of therapy is on the relationship and how to improve it.

Some clients, depending on the nature of the problem, may choose to seek individual psychotherapy prior to or along with couple's counseling.   Couple's therapy, because of the dynamics involved in a typical session, are usually 90 minutes to two hours in length.  One hour sessions are also possible but may prove to be an insufficient amount of time to present and resolve issues. 

You should be aware of the possibility for potential family and/or marital strain that may occur during therapy.  Family secrets may be told.  Therapy may disrupt a couple or marital relationship and sometimes may even lead to separation or divorce. Sometimes, too, it is possible for a couple’s problems to worsen immediately after beginning couple's therapy. Most of these risks are to be expected when people are making important changes in their lives and can and often do improve as therapy progresses.

Couples may also elect to do a personality and temperament testing to analyze and uncover similar and dissimilar personality patterns.  Such instruments include but are not limited to:

The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis - assesses an individual's psychological adjustment on nine common personality dimensions.  The couple's individual analyses are then criss-crossed to provide information about the feelings, attitudes, and behavior patterns of the couple.  It also compares and contrasts the couple's personality traits and assesses the degree to which they understand each other and agree with each other's self-assessment.

Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) - Assesses the couple's satisfaction with the relationship, similarities and differences, potential sources of conflict or rapport, and help identify personality factors that may predict marital compatibility and satisfaction.