ABSTRACT
This chapter provides couples assessment that is both comprehensive and integrative. It also describes an integrative approach to couples assessment. A common perception among most trainees and some therapists is that a couples assessment is a formal, verbal evaluation that is performed face-to-face with the couple by the therapist in the first interview(s). Case conceptualization is a clinical strategy for obtaining and organizing information about a client, explaining the client's situation and maladaptive patterns, and focusing treatment, anticipating treatment challenges and roadblocks, and preparing for termination. Case conceptualizations that are clinically useful and valuable provide therapists with a coherent treatment strategy for planning and focusing treatment interventions that will effect change. Effective case conceptualizations emphasize the unique context and the needs and resources that the individual or couple brings to treatment. Individual patterns in couple therapy involve the long-standing problems and maladaptive patterns that partners bring to and enact into their relational interactions.
