The Ways We Love A Developmental Approach to Treating Couples

Presenting an innovative approach to working with embattled couples, this highly readable book identifies seven universal patterns of intimate relating that express everyone's basic needs for both connection and separateness. Including nurturing and merging, controlling and competing, these patterns are what make relationships work--yet, ultimately, they can also tear couples apart. Extended, vivid clinical illustrations bring to life the problems that partners may encounter in the normal development of each pattern, the types of conflicts that result, and how short- or longer-term treatment can help restore the balance between relationship and personal growth.

Sheila A. Sharpe, PhD, specializes in psychotherapy with couples and individuals in private practice in La Jolla, California. Dr. Sharpe teaches in the Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and has published and presented widely on couple therapy.