Interactional Couple Therapy

Interactional Couple Therapy is an innovative, dynamic development in the field of marital and family therapy, quite unlike other earlier approaches. It offers a new lens, which is easy enough to learn and a safe, non-threatening way for couples to relate, and at the same time a structured and systematic procedure that places the couple at the centre of the psychotherapeutic process.   

Interactional Couple Therapy is different from other approaches, such as Emotion Focussed Therapy (EFT), Narrative Therapy, or Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT), which tend to emphasise more traditional individual-centred psychological processes, thereby reducing the problem to a quality of the individual/s and potentially overlooking the patterns of interaction occurring in the here-and-now, needed to successfully help them. This approach has been extensively developed, including more recently by the inspiring research of Charl Vorster (Professor of clinical psychology at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University and Professor Extraordinary at the North-West University), who established that our mental well-being is directly related to the nature and quality of our relationships or interactions with others. This is the reason why couples who have acquired insight or awareness into the underlying sources of their own responses and difficulties, may continue to feel distressed or unhappy: they are entrapped by their, hitherto unrecognised, patterns of interaction that continue to affect their mutual well-being.  

The Interactional Approach along with its special application here as Interactional Couple Therapy has been widely validated, including by an important doctoral research study in South Africa which established that optimally effective interpersonal relationships go hand in hand with high levels of mental well-being (Van Den Bergh, 2008; Vorster, Roos, & Beukes, 2013). It helps to answer various issues that couples encounter:

Why do we keep having the same arguments?

Why do cycle through periods of relative peace followed by conflict?

No matter what I say my partner doesn’t seem to hear or understand me?

How do I know if my partner and I are compatible?

Would it be better for us to separate?

Should we deal with the pain of the past or is it better to stay focussed on the present?

Is it possible to redefine our relationship?

What are the skills we can learn to optimise our relationship?

Interactional Couple Therapy draws on the couple’s preferred style of interpersonal communication and their patterns of interaction to change how they are relating to one another, which naturally leads to resolution of their original problem. This process is very much person-centred with timely and practical feedback that lends direction and careful guidance in the therapy process.