Customer Reviews

The Ways We Love: A Developmental Approach to Treating Couples

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At last! A book that speaks in down-to-earth plain English about complex concepts and offers a profoundly new way of understanding relationships of all kinds. As a psychotherapist, I found it especially helpful in its discussion of transference and countertransference issues in couples work, something rarely addressed in the literature. As a person in a relationship, I appreciated its humor, compassion, and philosophical outlook on the foibles of the human condition. I highly recommend Dr. Sharpe's book to professionals as well as the sophisticated lay public. How wonderful to recognize ourselves and chuckle while we learn...

This is a landmark work in its field. Dr. Sharpe , drawing upon the best in current psychoanalytic theory, has developed a remarkably integrated and sophisticated theoretical framework in which to explore the development and pitfalls of love relationships. She demonstrates its application to couple therapy with vivid and compelling clinical examples, alternately moving and witty. What is especially notable is her deft and sensitive therapeutic use of her own emotional responses in the therapy session.
The book is must reading, not only for all therapists who engage in couple therapy, but also for any mental health professional dealing with relationships. Her clear and engaging writing style makes the book also quite suitable for any non-professional who is interested in understanding the vicissitudes of loving.

This book explores different aspects of loving -- specifically, nurturing, merging, idealizing, devaluing, controlling, and competing. Each of these have typical developmental arcs, both within our childhood relationships and our adult relationships. In down-to-earth language, Sharpe looks at how early derailments may come to create similar derailments in our adult relationships, and how this can be worked through in couples therapy. The book offers many session narratives, which provide helpful illustrations of therapeutic interventions. With a developmental focus, this book is a nice supplement to others in this area (e.g., Gottman). An absolute must for any couples therapist (but also very helpful for individual counselors)!

In The Ways We Love: A Developmental Approach To Treating Couples, psychotherapist and educator Sheila Sharpe delineates a developmental theory of love relationships that provides a an effective and comprehensive approach to counseling couples. Multiple patterns of relating develop between couples over time and range from nurturing, merging, and idealizing, to devaluing, controlling, competing for superiority, and competing in love triangles. Sharpe supplies vital insights and useful tools for therapeutic work, as well as offering the clinician a multifaceted perspective on how couple relationships grow and what happens when their growth becomes flawed. The Ways We Love is an impressive contribution to professional and academic family therapy reading lists and reference collections.