Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy

Bridging Emotion, Societal Discourse, and Couple Interaction in Clinical Practice.- Gender, Emotion, and Change: The Neurobiology of Emotions in Couple Therapy.- Gender, Emotion, and Change: The Neurobiology of Emotions in Couple Therapy.- Expanding the Lens: How SERT Therapists Develop Interventions That Address Larger Context .- Learning to Practice Socio-cultural Attunement in Couple Therapy.- Gender and Power Issues in Heterosexual Couple Therapy: Moving the Disengaged Male from "I" to "We".- Building a Circle of Care in Same-Sex Couple Relationships: A Socio-Emotional Relational Approach.- Resolving Gender and Power Issues in Couple Therapy with Adult Survivors of Child Abuse .- Relational Spirituality, Gender, and Power: Applications to Couple Therapy.- When Therapy Challenges Patriarchy: Working with Power in Heterosexual Couple Therapy .

Carmen Knudson-Martin, PhD, LMFT, is internationally recognized for her work regarding gender, marital equality, and relational health. She is a founder of Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy, an approach that attends to the micro-processes through which couple interaction, emotion, and socio-cultural context come together in the moment by moment of clinical process. Her book, Couples, Gender, and Power: Creating Change in Intimate Relationships, weaves a link between research and practice as she makes the influence of the larger social context in couple relationships come alive and offers a step by step template to guide clinical work, with an emphasis on the political and ethical implications of therapist actions. She and her research team have published over 50 articles articulating the importance of the larger social context on issues such as marital equality, relational development, postpartum depression, women's health, and couple therapy. Carmen is a Professor and Director of the PhD program in Marital and Family Therapy at Loma Linda University in Southern California. She serves on the Board of directors of the Family Process Institute and the American Family Therapy Academy is series editor of the SpringerBriefs in Family Therapy.

"The authors introduce SERT as a new model for addressing couples' issues in therapy. They present several examples of how to integrate relational ethics, a sociocultural perspective with the role of emotions, neurobiology, and spirituality into couples' well functioning and satisfaction. The book is written with practitioners in mind ... but it can be helpful for graduate students, especially at the doctoral level, looking for the best fit model for their practices." (Ileana Ungureanu, Doody's Book Reviews, September, 2015)