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AAMFT Summer
Institutes for Advanced Clinical
Training
August
10-14, 2008
Vancouver,
Washington
 Advanced
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Couples: A Contextual
Approach
Norman B. Epstein, PhD
It is estimated that
more than 9 million couples -16 percent of couples in the
United States - see a marriage and family therapist every year
for help with problems ranging from intimacy to infidelity, to
escalating conflict and potential dissolution. During the last
decade, a number of effective interventions that help couples
heal their relationships have emerged. Cognitive-behavior
couple therapy (CBCT) is one such approach that has
substantial evidence for its effectiveness.
In CBCT, keys to
ameliorating relationship distress and enhancing relationship
strengths focus equally on the cognitions, emotions, and
behaviors occurring within the relationship. Interventions
with cognitions include identifying and modifying distorted or
inappropriate cognitions that partners have about each other
and their relationship. CBCT also involves changing negative
behavior patterns that have developed and building satisfying
interactions characterized by intimacy and mutual social
support. Some interventions for emotions are designed to
enhance partners’ awareness and expression of their emotions,
as well as empathy for each other’s subjective experiences,
whereas others are intended to help partners moderate their
excessive expression of emotions such as anger and anxiety.
This Institute will help participants gain an in-depth
understanding of how behavioral, cognitive, and emotional
responses shape the quality of couples’ intimate
relationships, ways to assess each area, and effective
treatment approaches.
Participants will be
introduced to a well-defined set of interventions that can be
used to help couples improve relationships by changing the way
they understand, behave, and feel. Participants also will
learn about the most up-to-date interventions used to help
couples, through lecture, discussion, demonstrations, and
experiential exercises.
This course will cover:
- the historical
development of CBCT into an integrative approach to
treatment of couples’ problems
- cognitive,
affective, and behavioral factors in couple functioning
- assessment methods
- case
conceptualization, including a CBCT perspective that takes
into account couples’ personal histories, and its relation
to other MFT theoretical orientations
- sources of
partners’ resistance to couple therapy and strategies to
overcome them
- effective
interventions for cognitions, behavior, and affect
- effective ways of
building relationship strengths and reducing vulnerabilities
to life stressors that affect couple relationships
- couple-based
interventions for relationship trauma (including
infidelity), physical and psychological abuse, and forms of
psychopathology such depression and anxiety
Course Schedule:
Monday, August 11 – Thursday, August
14, 2008
8:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. each day
This course provides 20 hours of continuing
education.
Norman B. Epstein,
PhD is an AAMFT Clinical Member, Approved Supervisor, and
the Director of the COAMFTE accredited marriage and family
therapy program at the University of Maryland, College Park.
He has published more than 90 journal articles and book
chapters, as well as four books, including Enhanced
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Couples: A Contextual
Approach (co-authored with Donald H. Baucom). He is
currently writing a new book on treatment of abusive behavior
in couples, which is under contract with the American
Psychological Association. Dr. Epstein’s teaching, research,
and professional publications have focused on understanding
and treating dysfunction in couple and family relationships.
He has played a central role in the development of
cognitive-behavioral couple therapy. He is a Fellow of the
American Psychological Association, a Diplomate of the
American Board of Assessment Psychology, and a Founding Fellow
of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. He maintains a part-time
private practice with individuals, couples, and families.
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