This article proposes a clinical practice for therapy with couples in which one partner suffered sexual abuse in childhood. Such couples often encounter unique difficulties with physical contact, intimacy, sexuality, communication, and trust, and their relationship dynamic may be marked by reenactments of past traumatic relational patterns. This clinical practice is founded on the assumption that establishing the witnessing lacking during the traumatic event in childhood can break the traumatic reenactments in adulthood, and spur recovery. The suggested practice may facilitate twofold witnessing: the couple's therapist witnesses the reenactments of the trauma in the couple's relationship; and the survivor's partner witnesses the trauma's effect on the survivor's personal life and relationship. Twofold witnessing can help break the cycle of traumatic reenactment and help the survivor integrate the events of her life into a more coherent, continuous narrative. The partner's presence also facilitates acknowledgement of what happened to the survivor, and helps the survivor elaborate on her stories of resistance, survival, and strength. Finally, each of the partners is able to appear more wholly and fully, and together to tell the preferred stories of their life as a couple, replete with the multiple relational patterns they wish to live, which may contradict the characteristics of the original trauma.

The present study examined the emergence of innovative moments in a successful case of Brief Integrative Psychotherapy (BIP) based on Hill’s 3-stage model. Hill’s model suggests that optimally therapeutic processes involve exploration (based on client-centered therapy), insight (based on psychoanalytic therapy), and action (based on behavioral therapy). Innovative moments are exceptions to the problematic pattern of meaning that brought the client to therapy. Previous studies showed that their occurrences in the therapeutic conversation were related to symptomatic improvement in different therapeutic models; nevertheless, they have not yet been explored in integrative psychotherapy, and especially psychotherapy that contains explicit psychodynamic components. The aim of the study was too examine the relations between innovative moments, on the one hand, and (a) symptomatic improvement, (b) therapist’s interventions, and (c) client’s subjective experience, session by session, on the other. A 12-session case study of a 27-year-old female client was coded according to the Innovative Moments Coding System. Outcome improvement was measured by the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2). Therapist’s interventions were coded according to the Helping Skills Scale (HSS). The subjective experience for each session was measured by the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ). The findings suggest that innovative moments are related to symptomatic change. Exploration and insight interventions were related to the emergence of more elementary innovative moments, whereas action interventions were found to be related to more highly developed innovative moments. Finally, innovative moments were strongly associated with 3 out of the 4 dimensions of client’s subjective experience of the session (depth, smoothness, and positivity). These results should be further explored at a sample level.

The primary aim of this paper is to show how narrative supervision can contribute to achieving ostensibly conflicting goals. On the one hand, power hierarchy can be counteracted and the multiple-truth stance enhanced in the supervisorsupervisee relationship, while supervisees are empowered to acknowledge their own expertise. On the other hand, a setting is provided in which supervisors can contribute from their expertise and experience to facilitate therapeutic training and supervision. To this end, the use of definitional ceremony practice (White, 2007) was taken further and was extended to three inter-connected group-supervision practices, which were implemented and explored. The expanded practice was named Multi-circular Definitional Ceremony practices (MCDC practices). A complementary aim is to demonstrate that the entire supervision process can be based on and included in MCDC practices whileOur thanks to the following people for lending us their wisdom, professionalism, friendship, and generosity: Chava and Hagit (fictitious names), Fogel Rachel, Gershoni Yael, Levenbach Darylle, and the staff members at the Barcai Institute/Tel-Aviv, Veeder Sarah.

This paper introduces the concept of “dissociative collusion” as a helpful theoretical and clinical tool for understanding and working with clients with histories of trauma in couple therapy. The paper describes ways to diagnose and treat dissociative collusion based on the integration of an object relations approach, a relational approach, and a narrative approach. Dissociative collusion, a unique version of the well‐documented “couple collusion,” describes relational unconscious dynamics where split‐off aspects of one or both partners are mutually dissociated in a complementary fashion that becomes a part of the shared unconscious and is reenacted in destructive ways. The dissociative collusion concept is especially relevant to couple therapists who work with clients with histories of trauma, who frequently use dissociation as a primary defense mechanism. We suggest that the challenge and goal for couple therapy with this population are to help them reconnect and better oscillate between dissociated self‐other configurations. A case of couple therapy of a wife who had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse and her husband who displayed frequent use of dissociative defenses is presented.

Only those who took up the lyre even among shadows can render unending praise out of a sense of foreboding.Only those who partook of the poppy sharing their meal with the dead will never lose the softest sound.However much the mirror reflection in the lake may blur and dissolve us, thou knowest the image [italics added].Only in the twilight zone do the voices become eternal and mild.1The publication of Klass, Silverman, and Nickman's Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (1996) marked a decisive shift in 20th-century grief literature. Whereas Freud (1917Freud ( /1993) and other psychoanalytically oriented theorists had emphasized the importance of relinquishing the strong affective bond with the deceased person, it has recently been proposed that the very continuation of the bond facilitates adjustment (Klass & Walter, 2001). Continuing bonds is generally understood in the scientific community as denoting the presence of an ongoing inner relationship with the deceased person by the bereaved individual (see Field, Gal-Oz, & Bonanno, 2003;Shuchter & Zisook, 1993). In recent years, grief researchers have shown that ' From Sonnet s to Orpheus (IX; S. Kitron, Trans.), by R. M. Rilke. Reprinted with permi ssi on of the translator. Some uni que features of the study presented in this chapter have been altered, masked, or del eted to conceal the identity of the participants.