Emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT) in action

Sue Johnson is an author, clinical psychologist, researcher, lecturer and renowned speaker, and one of the foremost experts to have innovated the field of couples and attachment therapy in adulthood. She invented Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), whose effectiveness has been proven over 35 years of peer-reviewed clinical research. Sue Johnson is Director and Founder of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT), Distinguished Research Professor at Alliant University in San Diego, California, and Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Johnson has received numerous awards for developing emotion-focused therapy and establishing the International Training and Certification Programme in EFT, as well as for her significant contributions to the fields of couples therapy, family therapy and attachment in adulthood. These include being made a member of the Order of Canada and receiving a lifetime achievement award from Psychotherapy Networker in 2022. Among Sue Johnson's books aimed at mental health professionals, the best known are: 'Creating Relationships. Handbook of emotion-focused couples therapy' (3rd edition, 2020), 'Emotion-focused family therapy' (2019) and 'Emotion-focused couples therapy with trauma survivors' (2002). The book 'Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) in the Individual, Couple and Family Setting' (2019) illustrates the promise made by attachment science with respect to the possibility of attributing meaning and repairing the individual's most meaningful relationships, enabling them to increase their strength and resilience. Attachment science offers the most powerful model for generating therapeutic change, especially in cases of anxiety and depression, and of the various intervention models, EFT is the one that most captures the very essence of the attachment perspective. EFT focuses on what it calls 'survival-oriented human connection', i.e. the strongest emotions, by systematically modelling the basic interactions that enable bonding with others. Sue Johnson's latest clinician-focused book 'A Guide to Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy. Cultivating Growth and Psychophysical and Emotional Well-Being in Every Client' (2021), emphasises the unique benefits of EFT as a multimodal approach to treating emotional disorders.