ABSTRACT
This chapter presents several approaches that integrate emotion into the heart of their approaches: namely, Susan Johnson's Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT), John and Julie Gottman's Gottman Method Couple Therapy, Steven Hayes's Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). EFCT is an integration of an experiential/gestalt approach with an interactional/family systems approach. EFCT focuses on reshaping a distressed couples structured, repetitive interactional patterns, and "the emotional responses that evoke these patterns, and fostering the development of a secure emotional bond". John and Julie Gottman created Gottman Method Couple Therapy as an outgrowth of John Gottman's research about what makes marriages and relationships last, as well as what predicts divorce. In ACT couple therapy, cognitive diffusion is used to counteract this engulfed style of emotional reaction. DBT was developed originally as a treatment for clients with borderline personality disorder.
