ABSTRACT
The first key upgrade to Couple Therapy 1.0 is making the couple’s interpersonal process the focus. The pathological dance, in which the emotional music generally matters more than the words, must become the principal concern of both the therapist and the couple. The noted couple therapist and researcher Susan Johnson put it this way: “The novice therapist has to learn not to get lost in the pragmatic issues and the content of interactions, but to focus instead on the process of interaction, and how inner experience evolves in that interaction” (2008, p. 129). Virtually all experienced couple therapists agree. This is a systems theory upgrade because it views much couple behavior as an emergent property of individual interactions, where what emerges is more than the sum of the individual contributions.
