The plan formulation method for couples (PFMC): early results.

According to Control-Mastery Theory (CMT; Weiss, 1993; Gazzillo, 2016), patients who look for a therapy have an unconscious plan aimed at disconfirming pathogenic beliefs, overcome problems, mastering traumas, and achieving developmental adaptive goals. Following a suggestion of Zeitlin (1991), we have hypothesized that also couples, when look for a psychotherapy, have a couple’s unconscious plan (Rodomonti et al., in press) which includes their goals, pathogenic beliefs, traumas, tests, vicious relational circles, virtuous relational circles and insights. On the basis of the first three-four sessions of their therapy, therapists can understand patients’ plan and formulate in a reliable way following a validated procedure: the Plan Formulation Method (PFM; Curtis et al., 1994). The aim of this work is to propose a method for the assessment of couples based on CMT and to show the early results of its validation: the Plan Formulation Method for Couples (PFMC), an adaptation of PFM. The PFMC follows the same steps indicated by Curtis (1994) for the PFM and involves four independent clinical judges that have access to the transcriptions of early couple’s therapy hours. The reliability is measured for each component of couple’s plan by calculating intraclass correlation; then less relevant items are deleted by determining the medians of judges’ ratings for item. At last, a separate judge removes the redundant items. We present the early results concerning the plan formulation of four couples in therapy which show - in line with previous research studies conducted in individual settings (Silberschatz, 2017)- that clinicians trained at CMT achieve high levels of inter-rater reliability in formulating the couple’s plan. PFMC enables to treat each couple in a case-specific way and provides the clinicians with a useful map for understanding couple’s complex dynamics and planning interventions.