capacities of their studies have been criticized, the Gottmans are the undisputed, award-winning leaders in bringing evidence-based practices to couples counseling.
Susan M. Johnson was born in England and was literally raised in a pub. She had an early interest in relationships just watching how people in her father’s bar interacted, talking, maneuvering, and connecting. It was her parents’ marriage that most absorbed her life, a marriage that was painful and led to divorce in spite of the fact that her mother and father loved each other until the end of their individual lives. Sue immigrated to Canada and eventually got her doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. With her adviser, Les Greenberg, she developed an early version of what is now called emotionally focused therapy. Her early studies found that staying present with the emotional experiences of couples was more effective than cognitive behavioral interventions and better than the “nothing” that occurred in a control group. Sue’s inspiration was recognizing that the same need a child has for a secure attachment (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1981) is also essential to real love in couples.
Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt had been married for a decade and were already internationally known relationship trainers when their marriage degenerated into arguments and discord that brought them to the brink of divorce. Harville Hendrix had appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show more than a dozen times in support of his best-selling book, Getting the Love You Want (Hendrix & Hunt, 2019). Still, as they will tell you, they did not always practice what they preached. They had developed a number of structured exercises for couples, including their now famous couple dialogues, and in the hopes of saving their marriage they began to use them with each other. These exercises are based on the belief that we all have childhood wounds—breaches in attachment and ways in which a caregiver disappointed us. Furthermore, we tend to search for a marital partner similar to that caregiver and then demand better treatment. To the extent that each partner can come to understand the wounds of the other and stretch into what the partner needs, both people can grow. Such partners can cocreate a safe and secure marriage.
Summary
I sometimes worry that those histories that people have not lived or been connected to in their own lives will simply be dismissed or will go by them like the wind. This history is long, and still it is meaningful to me, because I have met and known many of the people in this professional genogram. Some of these people granted me the privilege of spending a significant amount of time in their company. Some I merely met at conferences or watched while they did demonstrations of their work. Your own exposure to their work may only come through videotape or digital media. Still, I hope that you will seek out the chance to see both the historical figures and those who currently keep our field moving forward.
In this chapter, we have looked at the stories that go with the four genograms of couples and family counseling. That is how genograms should be used: They are a map and a vehicle for telling the stories of significance for the people represented on the map. And even though most genograms appear to be structural in nature, in some cases completed drawings can invoke a genuine emotional response in the people represented in them. When I look at my own map, I am often caught up in the memories of my life with my mother and father and how soon they were both gone from my life. I can start crying just by looking at the map. I did not expect a similar response to the genograms of couples and family counseling, but when I focus on the parts of the map that represent now deceased Adlerian colleagues, or I remember my experiences with Virginia Satir, or the last training I had with Michael White, tears flow once again. These are not all tears of grief: In many ways, they are tears of recognition of the many ways great teachers and friends have blessed my life.
Appendix
FIGURE A2.1 • Genogram of Systemic Pioneers and Their Offspring
FIGURE A2.2 • Structural, Strategic, Solution-Focused/Solution-Oriented Models
FIGURE A2.3 • From Postmodern, Social Constructionism to Feminism
FIGURE A2.4 • Evidence-Based Practice in Couples and Family Counseling
CHAPTER 3
The Couples and Family Practitioner as Person and Professional
In the fields that engage in family practice, it is really impossible to separate the person from the professional. Every part of becoming a family counselor requires you to engage in new ways of thinking, seeing, and conceptualizing. Personal reflection is a constant part of being fully human and present with your clients. Systemic theories and interventions are certainly important, but being able to form and maintain an effective therapeutic relationship is more important than any of the other skills you will acquire (Blow et al., 2007; Carlson et al., 2005). I talk about some of the qualities and traits that seem to facilitate constructive relationships in family practice later in this chapter. Most of these qualities can be learned, but they work best when they are fully integrated into the practitioner’s way of being.
Family counselors simply cannot divorce who they are from the work they do. Like everyone else in life, we have triggers, buttons that seem to get pushed regularly and that bring out the kinds of automatic responses that sometimes leave us asking, “Wow, what was that?” Such automatic responses usually come from unmet needs, unconscious motivations, challenged values or personality traits, or unfinished business, especially unfinished business with our family of origin. Our choice is either to be aware of our family issues and concerns or not. When we try to ignore our own issues and concerns, they commonly reemerge in counseling as emotional reactivity (or countertransference), strong positive or negative feelings that are triggered automatically. Such automatic responses are usually not helpful when working with families. They lack clarity and authenticity. We are left to ask, “With whom is the practitioner working: the family in front of them, themselves, or their own family of origin?” If you are going to choose a profession in family counseling, it will also be important to be open to self-evaluation, to expanding your awareness of your own family experiences and the meaning associated with them, and to the personal development of what Murray Bowen called a differentiated self. You will have to learn to recognize what triggers you, to challenge the automatic responses you have to old issues and concerns, and to find alternatives to the emotional reactions that have been with you for a long time. Choosing to become a professional family practitioner is also choosing to work on and develop yourself as a person.
The Family of the Family Practitioner
Virginia Satir used to say that if she walked
