A Psychological Approach to Individual and Couple Therapy

Stan Tatkin

July 4 – 8, 2011
Cape Cod, MA

About the Presenter

Stan Tatkin, Psy.D., MFT, is an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine. He is a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of A Psychobiological Approach To Couples Therapy® (PACT) which integrates neuroscience, infant attachment, arousal regulation, and therapeutic enactment applied to adult primary attachment relationships. He maintains a practice in Calabasas, California, and runs professional training programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boulder, Seattle and Austin. He has written several articles on attachment and affect regulation from a psychobiological perspective. He recently co-authored, Love and War in Intimate Relationships: Connection, Disconnection, and Mutual Regulation in Couple Therapy with Marion Solomon. Dr. Tatkin’s newest book, Neurobiology of Love: An Insider’s Guide to Your Partner, will appear Valentines Day 2012.

Symposium Description

The attachment drive for a secure base involves neurological and neuroendocrine systems and subsystems that determine such things as proximity seeking and contact maintenance.Couples most commonly enter therapy due to repeated, anticipated, and intense periods of mutual dysregulation whereby attachment injuries and adaptations become reanimated. In order to make the most of attachment theory, the clinician must incorporate a working knowledge of the neurobiological processes that underlie all primary attachment relationships. In addition, the couple therapist must possess a coherent narrative that explains where the couple has been, where they are, and where they must go. In other words, the therapist must be able to answer the question: why be together? Dr. Tatkin will focus on the crucial role of arousal and affect regulation in the adult primary attachment relationship. His approachintegrates mother-infant attachment, developmental neuroscience, psychobiological regulatory systems, therapeutic enactment, as well as the therapeutic frame and therapeutic stancenecessary to such an undertaking.