IMAGO RELATIONSHIP THERAPY: MARRIAGE AS THERAPY

Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt 11.08.2008 05:39



"Marriage as therapy" transfers the healing of persons from client-therapist interaction to a guided partner-partner relationship, thus replacing the role of the therapist as healer with the therapist as facilitator. This method, central to Imago Relationship Therapy, empowers the couple to be a resource for their own healing. Using the dialogue process to transform cognitive knowledge into experience, the transference between partners rather than between client and therapist is resolved, therapeutic gains are deepened and the relationship is transformed from conflict to deep contact, connection and empathy.

 

Imago Relationship Therapy as a theory is a synthesis and creative extension of the relational aspects of western psychological systems and spiritual traditions. Its therapeutic processes were developed exclusively from a study of couples. It is a therapeutic expression of the emerging "relational," as distinct from the "individual," paradigm. This paradigm views connectivity and relationship as foundational and the individual as secondary. 

 

This lecture will describe and demonstrate, by video, therapy in the relationship paradigm, and contrast it with therapy in the individual paradigm.