Thinking Here and Now
Conversations with innovators in psychotherapy

Couple therapy has evolved into one of the most effective interventions in the entire field of psychotherapy. No other psychological approach has established a more remarkable ability to influence clinically significant transformation as couple therapy.   Ellen Wachtel is an eminent couple therapist who has written extensively on the subject. Her books have been translated into many languages. She integrates into her systemic orientation experiential, psychodynamic and cognitive perspectives. Wachtel’s work centers on methods to help motivate each person in the relationship to change his or her part in the problematic interactions, and she has found that these methods work even with "difficult couples,"

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In this conversation, Aner Govrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman will discuss Wachtel's unique working methods with couples. Specifically, we will explore how attention to moment to moment choice points enables the therapist to keep the sessions focused, hopeful and positive,  how to focus on the couple's strengths even when they are in the midst of severe conflict,  and how to utilize an understanding of each person’s legacy issues to help each partner not only avoid landmines but also to create a truly loving relationship.

Ellen Wachtel has a Ph.D in clinical psychology from New York University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. She is the author of Treating Troubled Children and their Families; We Love Each Other But...Simple Secrets to Strengthen Your Relationship and Make Love Last; Family Dynamics in Individual Psychotherapy (with Paul Wachtel) and most recently, The Heart of Couple Therapy: Knowing What to Do and How to Do It. Her books have been translated into a number of languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Arabic. She gives workshops at home and abroad and has taught courses in Couples Therapy at the Ackerman Institute for the Family.