Intimate Strangers
Therapy Work with Intercultural Couples
This webinar was recorded and is now available as a Talk on Demand. Click here for more details.
Friday 22 January 2021 - A Live Webinar
A Webinar with Dr Reenee Singh
- Includes a recording of the event with access for a year (14 days post the event)
- Bookings close at 9.00am GMT Tuesday 19 January
In the UK, 2.3 million people are living with or married to somebody from a different ethnic group, and one in 10 relationships is intercultural. The figures for London are even higher and it is predicted that by 2030, fifty percent of people living in the capital will be foreign-born.
READ MORE...It is important to emphasise the strengths and resiliencies in intercultural couple relationships and not to assume that difficulties in an intercultural couple relationship are rooted in cultural differences. However, intercultural couples may be faced with unique challenges and there is a growing need for psychotherapists working in multicultural contexts to acknowledge and work with these. Psychotherapy with couples needing help can sometimes reach an impasse when the two people in the relationship feel like intimate strangers. Possibly the very qualities that drew them together are the ones that can lead to chasms of misunderstanding between them.
Drawing on research findings, clinical vignettes and experiential exercises, this webinar will focus on the themes and processes in intercultural couples and the dilemmas these may pose for couples and the clinicians working with them. The webinar will equip therapists with effective interventions, will include consideration of self-reflexivity and therapist’s positioning when working with intercultural couples.
FULL PROGRAMME
14.00 GMT (09.00 EST)
Introductions and Zoom Housekeeping
14.05
What are Intercultural Couples?
In the first section of the webinar Renee will define intercultural and interracial couples, illustrating how intercultural couples – both heterosexual and gay – are conceptualised differently in different cultures. We will look at recent research in the area of intercultural, interracial and interfaith relationships. She will draw on literature from the United States as well as a contemporary, multi-site, pan-European study that has explored differences in semantic polarities (Ugazio, 2013) between monocultural and intercultural couples.
14.45
Break
15.00
What are some of the Motifs in the Lives of Intercultural Couples?
The second part of the webinar will outline some themes and processes for intercultural couples. The most common of these are the meaning of home, constructions of coupleness, religion or faith, language, gender and parenting. Renee will draw on examples from both clinical sessions, and from popular media to illustrate the themes.
15.45
Break
16.00
How Should we Work with Intercultural Couples?
This section will begin by acknowledging the complexity of clinical practice with intercultural couples, highlighting the need for the therapist to be aware of the ways in which they position themselves and are positioned in the work. Participants will be encouraged to construct their own culture-grams during this session in order to be provided with at least one concrete tool to take into clinical or supervisory practice.
17.00
Discussion
17.30
End