'Doubling Down' On "Doubling" In Collaborative Couple Therapy
Dec. 09, 2013 03:11 PM Filed in: Collaborative Couple Therapy
Recently I wrote about one aspect of a training experience with Dan Wile, Ph.D., the originator of Collaborative Couple Therapy. As stated then, I will continue to write about Dan’s work as I deepen my understanding. I believe there is a subtlety to his model that is powerfully transformative. In the mean time I was struck by an additional insight from my experience in the November consulting group. In my original entry I wrote “Dan’s perspective is compassionate and particularly attentive to not ‘rebuking’ clients in even the smallest way.” I now have a more nuanced understanding of this.
Inherent in Dan’s methodology, I think, is a faith that individuals have the capacity to generate compassion for each other (and for ourselves) through the process of experiencing “confiding” and “intimate” conversations. Whatever the outcome of any particular conversation, I think Dan trusts this human capacity within all of us. (For the therapist to behave otherwise would certainly not model trust.) Collaborative Couple Therapy never works in opposition to the client’s perspective because of that trust. At her best, the therapist remains perpetually curious about the client’s experience, persistently refining understanding of that perspective in the ebb and flow of the conversation. This is gentle and patient route finding, deftly navigating shoals and eddies, allowing the river to reveal itself on its own terms. In that revealing, compassionate understanding naturally blooms. Great stuff!
--Doug
Inherent in Dan’s methodology, I think, is a faith that individuals have the capacity to generate compassion for each other (and for ourselves) through the process of experiencing “confiding” and “intimate” conversations. Whatever the outcome of any particular conversation, I think Dan trusts this human capacity within all of us. (For the therapist to behave otherwise would certainly not model trust.) Collaborative Couple Therapy never works in opposition to the client’s perspective because of that trust. At her best, the therapist remains perpetually curious about the client’s experience, persistently refining understanding of that perspective in the ebb and flow of the conversation. This is gentle and patient route finding, deftly navigating shoals and eddies, allowing the river to reveal itself on its own terms. In that revealing, compassionate understanding naturally blooms. Great stuff!
--Doug