ABSTRACT
Structural couple therapy (SCT) views the avoidance of conflict, or its premature termination, to be as potentially deleterious to a couple as is engagement in chronic, unresolved conflict. Unbalancing is the technique that SCT therapists use to challenge the structure of couple systems that avoid conflict. With couples that never initiate conflict, the technique is used to elicit conflict in the first place. When the therapist intends to unbalance, he/she begins by eliciting an enactment focused on content material that the therapist knows, based on his/her experience of the couple, the members have differences about. The therapist should never engage in unbalancing until he/she has delivered and “sold” a systemic reframing to the client couple. An SCT therapist never sees a “hero” and a “villain” when the therapist observes couple members interact in a dysfunctional manner. The therapist’s theoretical perspective inhibits him/her from attributing the dysfunctionality of the interaction to one member of the couple.
