By Irv Jacobs, M.D.
SANTA FE, New Mexico — Greetings from New Mexico’s state capital, where this week I am attending the annual “Creativity and Madness” Conference by The American Institute of Medical Education, at the Santa Fe Convention Center.
The theme of these conferences is largely to explore in detail the lives of high profile artists, who though productive, suffered serious mental or organic problems. They were painters, writers, performers of all sorts, who ultimately succumbed to their disturbances. Additional presentations demonstrate new ideas, adaptable in therapy practices. Attendees are largely therapists (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, etc.), but there are others, such as medical practitioners, pathologists, educators and lawyers.
The therapists are interested in new techniques to employ in their practices, and the others such as myself come for enrichment. All are also interested in new and renewed friendships with a terrific group of some 400 people and the presenters from all over the country. The schedule includes 22 presentations plus five hands-on optional workshops. The presentations are not simply lectures, but are generally creative artistic productions.
I wish to report on a new-to-me method of couples treatment, called Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). The workshop was given by a trio of therapists from New Hampshire and Massachusetts, all apparently Jewish. These were Jill Fischer, LICSW; Amy Goldfarb, LICSW; and Ronald Goldman, EdD.
Their presentation opened with a film depicting an arguing couple, demonstrating failure of communication over a series of simple misunderstandings while readying a dinner party for the two sets of in-laws, and the agruments’ aftermath. Shouting ensued, and the evening ended with a threat of divorce, and a night sleeping in separate rooms.
Next day they appeared for an appointment with Jill Fischer, still seething at each other, neither prepared to give an inch, in certitude of being right. What followed was a remarkably written short play, acting out the scene in Jill’s office, with Goldfarb as the anguished wife and Goldman the non-yielding husband. Their acting was truly professional, including dramatic physical gestures, timeouts for several private aside speeches by all three, and ultimately the shedding of tears and a breakthrough..
Guided by the skilled and persistent therapist (Fischer), the dialogue evolved painfully slowly, as the resistant husband and frustrated wife finally came to see how their behaviors failed to support the emotional needs of each other, resulting in their toxic relationship.
Goldman insisted on how hard he worked as daily breadwinner, and his priority need to decompress by watching TV and playing computer games. He justified his willful ignoring his wife’s appeals/demands for help, before and after the dinner party. For her part, she also had an important day job, plus the care of the kids and the house, with the superimposed immediate function to set an artistic table with a creative menu for their guests–and the ultimate cleanup after they left.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is the brainchild of therapist Sue Johnson, from about 2011. See Sue Johnson, Love Sense, New York, Little Brown, 2011, and Sue Johnson, Attachment Therapy in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) With Individuals, Couples, and Families, New York: The Guilford Press, 2019
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Dr. Jacobs is based in San Diego.