ABSTRACT
Structural couple therapy (SCT)—along with numerous other models of couple therapy—is founded upon a very different understanding of the problems couples bring into therapy. Its systemic world view leads it to see problems as residing not in individual couple members, but in the structure of the relationship that binds them together into a single, psychosocial organism. The practical upshot of all this is that SCT therapists and their clients almost always begin therapy on very different pages. Everything SCT therapists do in therapy is going to be based on their systemic understanding of clients’ presenting problem. In delivering a systemic reframe during the first session, the therapist is looking to do nothing more than to get her/himself and the clients on the same, systemic page. Early and repeatedly in a first session, the SCT therapist will elicit what in SCT parlance are called enactments, that is, extended periods in which the couple members interact with each other directly.
