Curare la relazione di coppia. L'incontro tra pratica clinica e ricerca empirica

[Autom. eng. transl.] The demand for advanced care by couples, whether they are marital, de facto or reconstituted, is increasingly common. This is also due to the transformation of the cultural scenario relative to the relationship between couple relationship and family relationship. The couple clinic has thus become a real therapeutic genre with its specificities, in which the client is the relationship between the partners and the fate of that relationship. The contribution focuses on the different epistemological and ethical concepts that guide clinical work with the couple. The first conception, the one empirically supported (Empirically Supported Treatments), proposes an ethic based on the efficacy-utility of the cure; the second, the qualitatively supported one, is based on a relationally oriented ethics and tends towards the search for meaning both in relation to the couple relationship and to the couple-therapist relationship. The contribution then deals, within this framework, with the question of difference, crucial in doing research on psychotherapy, between theory and model in one direction and between method and techniques for the other. Finally, it highlights how a real and effective encounter between clinical practice and empirical research is possible with regard to the couple relationship beyond the differences between therapeutic models. In this regard, methodological indications are offered which are able to take into account both the personal variable (the partners, but also the therapist), and the link as such (the couple's relationship, but also the therapeutic relationship).