This outstanding book provides therapists practicing EFT with African American couples with a deeper understanding of the cultural strengths as well as the legacy of racial trauma these couples may bring to therapy. Both experienced and new clinicians, searching for ways to increase their cultural competency, will be inspired by the vivid case examples as well as the discussions with Dr. Sue Johnson. This text will make a wonderful contribution to courses addressing couple and family therapy as well as diversity training in all mental health disciplines. It is a trailblazing book and it will have a major impact on our field. - Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University; author of Black Families in Therapy: Understanding the African American Experience
The challenges of clinicians providing culturally informed therapeutic interventions to their clients has been made a little easier today by Paul Guillory's text. A blending of the theoretical with the pragmatic, a meshing of the thinking with the authenticity of African-centered emotional connectedness and interdependence, and a synthesizing of the historical intergenerational trauma with the contemporary challenges of Black life in America into this EFT model make this volume a must have resource for mental health providers treating couples and individual clients alike. - Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D, Distinguished Psychologist, Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi); Fellow, American Psychological Association (APA)
This unique clinical volume is a must-read for therapists seeking to provide effective couple therapy to African American clients! Guillory offers a compelling challenge and illustrates a powerful path forward. The challenge is to become culturally humble by learning about the bonds of African American love in hostile environments. The path forward is to integrate a cultural lens into the empirically validated Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) model. Gripping stories of African American love and vivid case illustrations bring alive EFT's use of attachment theory to depathologize relational distress and to effectively reshape secure attachment bonds. - Lorrie Brubacher, M.Ed., EFT therapist, supervisor and trainer of Emotionally Focused Therapy; author of Stepping into Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Key Ingredients of Change (2018, Routledge), Adjunct, UNC, Greensboro, NC
