Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (Greenberg & Johnson, 1988)
This was the first book on EFT for couples, written by Dr. Greenberg and Dr. Susan Johnson, his former student. Their idea was to marry humanistic relational principles, systemic theory, and contemporary emotion theory. In a nutshell: Relational conflict cycles can be converted to virtual cycles through partners revealing to one another previously undisclosed vulnerable emotion. It worked!
The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (Johnson, 2004)
After presenting the success of their couples therapy, Dr. Greenberg returned to his deep study of individual psychotherapy, while Dr. Johnson continued her work with couples. She expanded the theory by significantly highlighting the role of attachment in adult love relationships. Attachment had been mentioned in the earlier volume, but it’s role was largely implicit in that presentation. Here, Dr. Johnson expresses her view that in couples, attachment is all-important — in fact, virtually synonymous with love. In this presentation, all steps, stages and principles ultimately refer to repairing/strengthening couples’ attachment bonds.
