Using Emotions as a Pathway for Change

Reviews the film, Emotionally Focused Therapy With Couples (2007) with Leslie S. Greenberg. Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) was first introduced in the 1980s by Susan M. Johnson as a response to the need for a more clearly validated approach toward couple therapy that recognized the couple's emotional system as a possible tool for change. With EFT, affect regulation becomes the focus of therapy rather than the outcome, because the emotional system is viewed as the pathway for understanding and facilitating behavioral changes. Within the last decade, the basic tenets of attachment theory have served as a framework for supporting the therapeutic process of EFT, and research based on this approach has been well documented in the literature. Greenberg discusses this theoretical base in the video Emotionally Focused Therapy With Couples, which is part of the American Psychological Association Psychotherapy Video series (Series IV: Relationships), hosted by Jon Carlson. This video is designed to help clinicians and students in training understand the concepts of EFT and how to apply them. As with EFT, the process may appear easier to implement when listening to an expert than it really is. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)