Lien-Chien Yang
Taipei City Psychiatric Center
This research is an attempt to the process of empowerment in couple therapy. The therapy per se is seen as a process of empowerment while achieving therapeutic goals. After analyzing the contents of therapy of a case of morbid jealousy, the author notes that the therapist‘s active participating in the therapy and selecting information of feeding back to the client, contribute to enhance the flexibility of internal structure of the client. These efforts accomplish goals of therapy and empower the client. In this article, the therapist’s endeavors of intervention are illustrated by excerpts of therapy. Reasons of empowerment are suggested as: (1) the therapist’s active participation; (2) the process of empowerment begins as soon as contacting with the client, at that time the therapist starts to establish the antecedent conditions of empowerment; (3) the therapist and clients are in the process of ‘structural coupling’, so the therapist’s persistence of some attitudes and concepts might be able to induce clients’ accommodation; (4) when there is flexibility of internal structure, clients are able to rethink, to share the feelings, to be motivated, and to re-decide; and (5) clients know what they want and how to do.
Keywords: couple therapy, process research, empowerment, morbid jealousy, power