Harmony of the spheres: musical elements of couple communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-58
Author(s):  
Judith Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Family Therapy ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Individual Therapy ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Couple Communication ◽  
Therapeutic Setting ◽  
Reciprocal Imitation ◽  
Musical Elements ◽  
Therapeutic Responses

Music is the language of the emotions and musical elements of speech are the way in which emotional states are expressed. This article amplifies the multi-modal musical spectrum of psychotherapy with couples, families, and individuals. Musical qualities of communication underlie myriad forms of unconscious and conscious communication in the therapeutic setting, whether concerning the analytic couple of individual therapy, the various dyads and triads of couple therapy, or the multiple intersecting groupings involved in family therapy. When couples engage in states of intersubjective intimacy, their dialogue features a melodious form of speech featuring improvised reciprocal imitation, theme, and variation. When a couple have been triggered into an interlocking traumatic scene, harmony is replaced with cacophony. Awareness of the acoustic features of different emotional states such as depression, anger, and anxiety, as well as specific features of the activation of an interlocking traumatic scene, helps alert therapists that such a shift has taken place. In turn, this will help tune appropriate therapeutic responses.

scholarly journals Good vibrations: A review of vocal expressions of positive emotions

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roza G. Kamiloğlu ◽  
Agneta H. Fischer ◽  
Disa A. Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Nonverbal Vocalizations ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Vocal Expressions

AbstractResearchers examining nonverbal communication of emotions are becoming increasingly interested in differentiations between different positive emotional states like interest, relief, and pride. But despite the importance of the voice in communicating emotion in general and positive emotion in particular, there is to date no systematic review of what characterizes vocal expressions of different positive emotions. Furthermore, integration and synthesis of current findings are lacking. In this review, we comprehensively review studies (N = 108) investigating acoustic features relating to specific positive emotions in speech prosody and nonverbal vocalizations. We find that happy voices are generally loud with considerable variability in loudness, have high and variable pitch, and are high in the first two formant frequencies. When specific positive emotions are directly compared with each other, pitch mean, loudness mean, and speech rate differ across positive emotions, with patterns mapping onto clusters of emotions, so-called emotion families. For instance, pitch is higher for epistemological emotions (amusement, interest, relief), moderate for savouring emotions (contentment and pleasure), and lower for a prosocial emotion (admiration). Some, but not all, of the differences in acoustic patterns also map on to differences in arousal levels. We end by pointing to limitations in extant work and making concrete proposals for future research on positive emotions in the voice.

scholarly journals The Integrated Use of Individual and Family Psychotherapy

1984 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.D. Steinhauer ◽  
G.W. Tisdall
Keyword(s):  
Family Therapy ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
Individual Therapy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Psychotherapy ◽  
Concurrent Use ◽  
The Family ◽  
Individual Family ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Clinician

For almost thirty years after the development of family therapy, the concurrent use of family and individual psychotherapy was seen as incompatible by leading proponents of each modality. Although recently the literature has revealed an increased willingness to utilize family and individual therapies concurrently, the decision for or against any such combination has been left largely to the intuition or bias of the individual clinician. This paper suggests the concurrent use of family and individual psychotherapies when disturbances of family structure and interaction co-exist with, reinforce, and are maintained by largely ego-syntonic internalized psychopathology (that is, the character defences of individual family members). It provides a rationale for integrating the concurrent therapies, and uses clinical examples to illustrate how each can potentiate the other. There is a discussion of indications and contraindications for the integrated use of concurrent family and individual therapy. From their attempts to apply these principles, the authors conclude that the experience for the family, the individual and the therapists is that the selective and integrated use of concurrent family and individual therapies can achieve more than can either therapy alone — the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

scholarly journals Predicting couple therapy outcomes based on speech acoustic features

PLoS ONE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. e0185123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Nasir ◽  
Brian Robert Baucom ◽  
Panayiotis Georgiou ◽  
Shrikanth Narayanan
Keyword(s):  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Therapy Outcomes

Ethics in Couple and Family Psychotherapy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Schaer ◽  
Célia Steinlin
Keyword(s):  
Family Therapy ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Couple And Family Therapy ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
The Enlightenment

In couple and family therapy, the focus is on relationships, interactions, and the dynamics within the system. The therapist should strive to maintain a balanced and trustful relationship with all members of the system, and at the same time do justice to their individual wishes and perspectives. Couples and families usually present themselves with conflicts of interest that they have failed to resolve. Dealing with conflicts of interest is therefore an important element of couple and family therapy. The existing ethical guidelines, defined by psychological professional associations and medical ethics experts, are not specific enough at representing the complexities which family and couple therapists are confronted with. As an alternative to the ethical guidelines, Beauchamp and Childress (2008) have worked out general ethical principles: respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. In this chapter, a number of ethical problems in couple and family therapy are discussed against the backdrop of these principles. Problems in family and couple therapy can be addressed based on the question who of the system members carries more blame and who can execute more control. Four models of help, i.e., the medical model, the compensatory model, the enlightenment model, and the moral model, are presented with regard to this question. Finally, it is argued that ethical issues in couple and family therapy are relational and context-dependent. They must therefore be resolved in the encounter with each other.

Defining and assessing key behavioral indicators of the Shifting Cultural Lenses model of cultural competence

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 594-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Regeser López ◽  
Ana C Ribas ◽  
Tamara Sheinbaum ◽  
María M Santos ◽  
Aldo Benalcázar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Individual Therapy ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Coding System ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Behavioral Indicators ◽  
The Patient’S View ◽  
Therapy Sessions

Models of cultural competence highlight the importance of the sociocultural world that is inhabited by patients, and the question of how best to integrate sociocultural factors into clinical assessment and intervention. However, one significant limitation of such approaches is that they leave unclear what type of in-session therapist behaviors actually reflect cultural competence. We draw on the Shifting Cultural Lenses model to operationalize culturally competent in-session behaviors. We argue that a key component of cultural competence is the collaborative relationship between therapists and patients, in which therapists shift between their own cultural lenses and those of their clients, as they co-construct shared narratives together. Accordingly, we propose that culturally competent therapist behaviors include accessing the client’s views, explicitly presenting their own views as mental health care professionals, and working towards a shared understanding. We further specify the latter set of behaviors as including the practitioner’s integration of the patient’s view, their encouragement of the patient to consider their professional view, and the negotiation of a shared view. We developed a coding system to identify these therapist behaviors and examined the reliability of raters across 11 couple and 4 individual therapy sessions. We assessed whether the behavioral codes varied in expected ways over the first 3 sessions of 2 therapists’ couple therapy as well. Operationalizing the behavioral indicators of the Shifting Cultural Lenses model opens the door to the integration of both process- and content-oriented approaches to cultural competence.

The Contribution of Creative Responses to the Experience of Shame in Couple Psychotherapy

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amita Sehgal
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Core ◽  
Developmental Significance ◽  
The Relationship

This paper describes how the emotional states of shame and humiliation are interconnected. Recent neurophysiological findings are drawn on together with an appreciation of the developmental significance of shame in mother–infant interactions in the first two years of life to explain the importance of the application of these concepts to couple therapy. Object relations theory is also cited to explore some of the unconscious dynamics that might be operating in couples where shame and humiliation form the core of their relational dynamic. This is followed by the description of how partners can be helped to manage the other's shame effectively and, in so doing, give rise to a novel and much longed-for experience within the relationship. Finally, the clinical challenges of working with shame and humiliation in couple psychotherapy are considered.

Editorial: Couple Therapy and Family Therapy

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Lebow
Keyword(s):  
Family Therapy ◽  
Couple Therapy
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document