News from the 2009 AAMFT Annual Conference

We’ve just returned from the wonderful 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Marriage & Family Therapists in sunny Sacramento CA, one of the premiere conferences for couples and family therapists. AAMFT is the organization that accredits Masters and Doctoral-level training programs at major universities, publishes a scientific journal, maintains professional standards for its members, and recently achieved licensure of marriage and family therapists in all 50 states. University professors bring their graduate students to the conference to introduce them to what’s happening in the field.

Dr. Schnarch has presented at the conference every year for almost 15 years, and Dr. Ruth Morehouse frequently did likewise over the last decade. At last year’s meeting they, together with Dr. Susan Regas (Chair, Family and Couple Clinical Psychology Emphasis, California School of Professional Psychology) presented a complete Crucible “track” of five workshops. This unusual opportunity was an honor, and we received great ratings and comments. Figuring nothing could top this peak experience, we weren’t prepared for what happened at this year’s conference.

What good thing should we mention first? The incredible response we received from students? The enthusiasm of professors using our books in their courses? Audience response at our presentations? Signing advance-release copies of Intimacy & Desire for the constant stream of people at our booth? Enthusiasm for our forth-coming Crucible Therapy Training Program? Or the unexpected acknowledgement of the Crucible Approach being a significant contribution to the field, in a major address in front of the entire organization?

At the closing plenary session, Dr. Dorothy Becvar, Professor of Social Work at Saint Louis University and Editor of the journal, Contemporary Family Therapy, delivered a presentation, Providing News of a Difference: Family Therapy Through the Years. In it she highlighted “the significant ideas that have distinguished the field since its inception and continue to be its hallmark of uniqueness.” Each person’s picture was projected as she described his or her contribution, starting with early founders of the 1950s. As Dr. Becvar got to modern times, she noted our work, a wonderful unanticipated recognition of Crucible being a major approach in the field.

This culminated four days of one positive experience after the other at the conference. It started with a full-day pre-conference workshop on Thursday by Dr. Ruth, Treating Female Arousal Problems with the Crucible Approach. Friday morning Dr. David and Dr. Susan Regas gave a powerhouse workshop, Affairs? Pornography? No Sex? Limited Personal Development? to a standing-room-only crowd of 250+ professionals. In it, we reported extensive results obtained from over a thousand subjects which empirically validate the Crucible Approach’s integration of sex, intimacy, and differentiation, and showed how Crucible Therapy differs from conventional therapy in resolving affairs, pornography conflicts, and sexual desire problems.

Friday afternoon, Drs. David, Ruth, and Susan teamed up again for Strengthening Families Through the Crucible Approach, highlighting our work with families under stress. Dr. David outlined how the Crucible Approach applied to families. Dr. Ruth gave a case example of working with 3-generation family problems. Dr. Susan presented additional research findings demonstrating our Crucible Parenting Program for poverty-level parents increased their differentiation, reduced anxiety and depression, and improved their parenting. Saturday morning, the inexhaustable Dr. Ruth delivered, Remarriage, Blended Families: Challenges in Differentiation, showing therapists how to deal with conflicting loyalties, integrity struggles over differing values, and the emotional fusion that occurs in blended families.

In between workshops, we manned the Crucible Institute booth in the Exhibition Hall, where we sold the very first copies of Intimacy & Desire. These were truly hot-off-the-press copies, shipped directly to the Convention, not available anywhere else. People wanting autographed copies contended with graduate students wanting their picture taken with Dr. David.

We’ve known lots of schools use Constructing the Sexual Crucible, Passionate Marriage, and Resurrecting Sex as required texts in graduate and undergraduate courses. We’ve just never known how many and who they were. Well, it’s more than we guessed, and soon we’ll know the details. Professors liked our new mission to bring together instructors using our books to exchange teaching methods, as much as they liked examination copies of Intimacy & Desire for possible course adoption. The next generation of therapists has been learning about the Crucible Approach in school for some time, and announcing the reopening of our Crucible Therapy Training Program in early 2010 made lots of them happy. We also heard from state Marriage & Family associations in Washington and Missouri where Dr. David is scheduled to conduct 1-day workshops in early 2010, who tell us local excitement is already building.