Couple Counselling
A Practical Guide
- Martin Payne - Private Practice, Norwich
Couple Counselling outlines the essential principles and practices of couple counselling. Demystifying this form of therapy, the author provides a step-by-step guide from the first meeting through to subsequent sessions. The book includes a wealth of supporting features including case examples, student exercises, points for reflection and memory-jog pages to use in practice. As well as chapters illustrating counselling for problems frequently experienced by couples, such as sexual difficulties, infidelity, violence and abuse, key content includes:
- cultural differences in couples work
- varieties of committed relationships
- responses to specific difficulties
- ethical issues that arise as a result of working with two people
- gender differences in relation to the counsellor's own sexuality and/or gender
- the value of training courses and supervision
- persons' narratives as a basis for change
This book comprises a sound basis for one-to-one practitioners wishing to expand their expertise and practice of therapy into working with couples, and for students training in this mode of counselling.
'This book is well overdue and fills a gap in the market for accessible, pragmatic and sophisticated writing about therapy with couples. This book is inclusive, user-friendly and manages to make links with other approaches where others see divisions' -
Mark HaywardInstitute of Narrative Therapy
'I strongly recommend this book to any individual counsellor who wants to work effectively with couples, and also to any couple counsellor who wants to enrich their practice' -
Barry Bowen, Systemic Psychotherapist
An excellent book for students training to work with couples. Lots of case examples as well as learning exercises that include roles plays and discussions. I will definitely be incorporating some of these into my class sessions as well as recommending this book to students.
a basic solid guide to begin looking at couple therapy
A good textbook for working with couples. A practical guide to working with couples with good examples.
This publication is outstanding! It helpfully guides the practitioner through the transistion from indivudal counselling to working with couples together with discussing the strucutre of the first session and beyond.
I highly recommend this publication for anyone interested in developing from individual to couples counselling.
This is a great resource for those involved in couple counselling, not only from a counselling professional perspective, but also for those involved in counselling couples in different settings.
I will recommend this to any of my Diploma students who have an interest in working with couples. I have also found it useful for my own practice.
Couple counselling is not taught as a stand alone course, but part of. Therefore this book, gave an overall view of couple counselling that was easy to understand and shared some very useful insight and tips.
This is a good basic handbook and practical guide, setting out the process of narrative therapy with couples clearly and with many case illustrations. Academically, however, it is rather too basic for level 7 students
Useful but as there is not much provision for couple work in the NHS we focus much more on CBT using your Westbrook et al text
