Couple Resilience

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

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2. Couple Resilience and We-ness

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Resilience in Couples: A View of the Landscape

      • Karen Skerrett

      Pages 3-22

   3. Theoretical and Methodological Underpinnings of Resilience in Couples: Locating the ‘We’

      • Karen Fergus

      Pages 23-42

3. Resilient Processes and Applications to Specific Populations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 43-43

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   2. Resilience in Lesbian and Gay Couples

      • Arlene Istar Lev

      Pages 45-61

   3. Sexual Resilience in Couples

      • Andrea M. Beck, John W. Robinson

      Pages 63-82

   4. Dyadic Adaptation to Chronic Illness: The Importance of Considering Context in Understanding Couples’ Resilience

      • Kristi E. Gamarel, Tracey A. Revenson

      Pages 83-105

   5. Relationships and the Neurobiology of Resilience

      • Brent J. Atkinson

      Pages 107-120

4. Investigations into Facets of Couple Resilience

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 121-121

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   2. Mutuality and the Marital Engagement – Type of Union Scale [ME (To US)]: Empirical Support for a Clinical Instrument in Couples Therapy

      • Jefferson A. Singer, Beata Labunko, Nicole Alea, Jenna L. Baddeley

      Pages 123-137

   3. Identification with the Relationship as Essential to Marital Resilience: Theory, Application, and Evidence

      • David W. Reid, Saunia Ahmad

      Pages 139-161

   4. “We-ness” in Relationship-Defining Memories and Marital Satisfaction

      • Nicole Alea, Jefferson A. Singer, Beata Labunko

      Pages 163-177

   5. Forgiveness: A Route to Healing Emotional Injuries and Building Resiliency

      • Catalina Woldarsky Meneses, Leslie S. Greenberg

      Pages 179-196

5. Looking Back, Moving Forward

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. Resilient Couple Coping Revisited: Building Relationship Muscle

      • Karen Fergus, Karen Skerrett

      Pages 199-210

This distinctive volume expands our understanding of couple resilience by identifying and exploring specific mechanisms unique to intimate relationships that facilitate positive adaptation to life challenges. Committed partnerships represent a unique form of relational alliance that offers an opportunity and challenge to go beyond the self - to develop as individuals and as a relationship. The contributors to this volume represent a range of perspectives that integrate conventional relationship science and innovative empirical and theoretical work on the importance of meaning-making, narrative construction, intersubjectivity, forgiveness, and positive emotion in couple life. The volume also offers a unique anchor point - ‘We-ness’ as it relates to the intersection between shared, personal identity and well-being. Under-examined relational contexts such as resilience among LGBT partners and sexual resilience during illness adds further refinement of thought and application.      

• Creation of Meaning
• Dyadic Coping among Couples with HIV
• Dyadic Resilience and Coping
• Fostering Couple Resilienece
• Intersubjectivity Theory and Resilience
• Marital Satisfaction
• Relational Intimacy Model of Sexual Motivation
• Relationship Resilience
• Relationship-Defining Memories
• Resilience in Lesbian and Gay Couples
• Self and Experience of 'We-Ness'
• Sexual Resilience in Couples
• Supporting Relational Positivity
• Systemic-Constructivist-Couple-Therapy
• The Resilience of Marriage
• We-Coping
• Well-Being in Couples

“Couple Resilience: Emerging Perspectives, edited by Karen Skerrett and Karen Fergus, is an excellent book. … this book is loaded with excellent conceptual and empirical information. It should prove very useful to clinicians and researchers. I will adopt it for my courses in couple and family therapy. I will recommend it to my colleagues, and, finally, I will recommend it to couples experiencing serious illness.” (Doug Pettinelli, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 61 (4), January, 2016)

"As our understanding of resilience grows, it is timely that we have a fresh look at the special ways couples create resilient systems that are able to cope with complex adversity. Building on previous work on family resilience, this volume integrates new ways we’re understanding couples and their collective capacity to cope with diverse forms of stress. With experts drawn from diverse fields like family therapy, neuroscience, and the broader social and psychological sciences, and with plenty of examples and provocative arguments, this wonderful collection of authors shows that relational resilience among intimate partners is unique from the resilience of each individual alone."(Prof. Michael Ungar, Dalhousie University, Halifax)
 
"In Couple Resilience: Emerging Perspectives, Karen Skerrett and Karen Fergus apply the lens of resilience to a wide array of couple contexts and issues. The distinguished group of chapter authors nicely blend theory, clinical wisdom, and research in focusing on timely topics such as resilience in LGBTQ couples, forgiveness, and couples facing illness, as well as the links between neurobiology in resilience. Throughout, the central role of collaborative coping in couples emerges." (Prof. Jay Lebow, Northwestern University, Evanston)     

• Ctr. for Applied Psychol. Study at Northwestern Univ., The Family Institute/, Evanston, USA

  Karen Skerrett

• Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada

  Karen Fergus

Karen Skerrett is a clinical psychologist and affiliate of the Family Institute/Center for Applied Psychological Studies at Northwestern University and adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. She most recently was an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego, where she designed and implemented their advanced practice program in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. She is a long time faculty member at the Chicago Center for Family Health, an affiliate of the University of Chicago. She maintains ties to her dual training as a nurse and a clinical psychologist through a long-term clinical and consulting practice specializing in the treatment of couples and families, particularly those challenged by illness and disability. Her research focuses on resilient processes in couples across the lifespan and strength-based approaches to couple treatment. She is the author (with Jefferson Singer) of Positive couple therapy: Using we-stories to enhance resilience, 2014, Routledge Press and has contributed numerous book chapters and articles to professional journals. She reviews for Family Process and the Journal of Family Nursing, among others. She presents nationally and internationally on adult development, life cycle transitions, innovative approaches to couple treatment and the unique processes of relational resilience and growth in couples across the lifespan. Her work has appeared in

the Chicago Tribune, Parents magazine, Psychology Today and the San Diego Union Tribune.

Karen Fergus, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor with the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto. She holds a cross-appointment as a Clinician-Scientist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre-Odette Cancer Centre where, in addition to her research activities, she has had a clinical practice since 1998. Karen’s research interests include: couple resilience and couple adjustment to life-threatening illness; differential impacts of cancer across the lifecycle; illness-related loss and grief; and developing and evaluating innovative programs to address these issues. She is the principal investigator for a national trial examining the efficacy of “Couplelinks.ca,” a strengths-based online intervention for young couples facing breast cancer. She has travelled across Canada giving talks and workshops on relationships and cancer to general and professional audiences. Her research has been recognized by the National Council on Family Relations, Anselm Strauss Award (2002) and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Cause Leadership Award (2013).       

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