This presentation explores what happens as societal context, power, and emotion converge in couple therapy. Video clips illustrate how to apply Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy (SERT), an approach that centers relational justice as an important component of ethical, socioculturally attuned practice and challenges cultural discourse that privileges individuality at the expense of relationships. Developed through over 15 years of process research focused on what works to create transformative, third-order change, SERT interrupts societal-based inequities and enables partners to realize their expectations for mutually supportive, health affirming relationships based on the Circle of Care––mutual vulnerability, attunement, influence, and relational responsibility. Participants will learn key clinical strategies for each of the three phases of the SERT clinical sequence, with an emphasis on mapping the socio-contextual nature of emotion, working with the connections between power and sociocultural vulnerability, and implications for clinical decision-making in couple therapy.

This presentation explores what happens as societal context, power, and emotion converge in couple therapy. Video clips illustrate how to apply Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy (SERT), an approach that centers relational justice as an important component of ethical, socioculturally attuned practice and challenges cultural discourse that privileges individuality at the expense of relationships. Developed through over 15 years of process research focused on what works to create transformative, third-order change, SERT interrupts societal-based inequities and enables partners to realize their expectations for mutually supportive, health affirming relationships based on the Circle of Care––mutual vulnerability, attunement, influence, and relational responsibility. Participants will learn key clinical strategies for each of the three phases of the SERT clinical sequence, with an emphasis on mapping the socio-contextual nature of emotion, working with the connections between power and sociocultural vulnerability, and implications for clinical decision-making in couple therapy.

Couple therapy is difficult for many reasons. Therapists must deal with two clients, often at war with each other, with differing psychologies, histories, agendas, and levels of commitment to therapy. Additionally, there are many schools of thought on how best to do couple therapy and relatively little guidance concerning how to choose among them. In this lecture, Professor Arthur Nielsen will describe his own development as a couple therapist that led to the integrative approach described in his two textbooks on couple therapy:
• A Roadmap for Couple Therapy: An Integration of Systemic, Psychodynamic, and Behavioral Approaches (2016), and
• Integrative couple therapy in action: A practical guide for handling common relationship problems and crises (2022).
Using a case history, Dr. Nielsen will describe the core research-tested interventions used by the three main approaches to couple therapy (systemic, psychodynamic, and behavioral/educational) and show how to sequence and integrate them depending on the problems that couples present. The lecture/workshop should be valuable to both beginners and advanced practitioners of couple therapy, especially as will address issues of sequencing and choice between the myriad possible interventions now available.