A METHOD FOR THE ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION IN WORKING WITH COUPLES: THE COUPLE'S PLAN AND ITS APPLICATION TO A CLINICAL CASE

According to Control-mastery theory (CMT; Weiss, 1993; Gazzillo, 2016), patients come to therapy in order to get better, and they have a plan for doing so (Weiss, 1993; Silberschatz, 2005, 2012). Following the suggestion of Denis Zeitlin (1991), we extended this hypothesis also to couples who look for a treatment. The aim of this work is to suggest a method for the assessment of couples based on the CMT and its implementation to in couple therapy. We hypothesized that also the couple that seeks psychotherapy has a couple’s plan (Crisafulli, Rodomonti, 2017), which comprises goals, pathogenic beliefs, traumas, tests, dysfunctional relationship patterns -vicious relational circle-, resources -virtuous relational circle- and insights. In order to formulate the couple’s plan, the clinician/rater should have access to the transcriptions of: one/two couple sessions; one/two individual sessions; a couple session aimed at talking about what emerged during the assessment and about the specific treatment proposed to them. The empirical tool which may be useful for this task are: the Interpersonal Guilt Rating Scale-15 (IGRS-15, Gazzillo et al., 2017) and the Pathogenic/Problematic Beliefs Scale (PBS; Silberschatz, 2016), both in their clinician and self-report forms. In the clinical case we will present, the couple’s plan allowed to better understand the dysfunctional dynamics underlying the individual and dyadic suffering and gave to the couple the opportunity to understand the meaning of their own and the partner's behaviors, emotions, reactions. This application of CMT is both in line with the main approaches to couple therapy and is innovative. Indeed, the couple's plan may provide the clinicians -particularly young therapists- with a useful compass for understanding couple’s complex dynamics and planning case-specific interventions. Moreover, a work aimed at solving couple’s problems can generate positive indirect consequences on the functioning of the whole family system.