Expanding the Lens: How SERT Therapists Develop Interventions that Address the Larger Context

Abstract

Sociocultural contextual discourses influence men and women regarding how they should perform in couple relationships. The processes of power and privilege embedded in these dominant discourses are taken for granted and tend to go unnoticed in heterosexual relationship dynamics. Couple and family therapists (CFTs) are challenged to recognize these processes when people seek help with relationship distress. As therapists new to dealing with gender and power issues, we decided to study how other CFTs conceptualize and attend to the effects of sociocultural context on their client couples. In this chapter, we summarize our qualitative research on what informs CFTs as they apply the Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy (SERT) contextual lens with their couple clients. We started this study because we had unique access to verbatim transcripts of SERT therapists discussing couple therapy sessions in live supervision and debriefings with as many as nine other team members. Our goal was to understand how these therapists conceptualize, apply, and critique their process of developing contextually conscious approaches in their work with heterosexual couples. We present our study findings on how these therapists identified and attended to invisible power imbalances between partners through the use of case examples. We also share our personal reflections on what we learned through this study process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)