Navigating Emotional Currents in Collaborative Divorce: A Guide to Enlightened Team Practice - Softcover

Scharff, Kate; Herrick, Lisa R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1616320745 ISBN 13: 9781616320744

Publisher: American Bar Association, 2011

Synopsis

Designed to help all professionals--lawyers, as well as mental health professionals, financial neutrals, etc.--who practice in the area of Collaborative Divorce, this book explains how marital dynamics (both conscious and unconscious), combined with the traumas of both the current divorce and those resulting from previous situations, will be re-enacted within the Collaborative process. If these go unaddressed, misunderstood or unmetabolized by the team, they can impede progress, create difficulty in team functioning, result in a compromised agreement, or cause a complete breakdown of the process itself. In presenting this framework for thinking about divorcing clients and how best to work with them, Scharff and Herrick make these key assumptions:

• The ways our clients think, feel, and behave are often driven by unconscious factors
• Those unconscious factors play a strong, sometimes problematic role in the course of a Collaborative case
• It is only by developing an understanding of the dynamics underlying our clients' patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that we can help them to navigate the Collaborative process.

The authors examine the psychological underpinnings of the Collaborative process itself (why we do what we do), the ways in which individual professionals and their teams are affected by the emotional make-ups of their clients, and the issues of assessment and technique. One might wonder how relevant it is to their divorce practice that the author venture into what might feel like psychotherapeutic terrain. The primary answer is that unless you understand all the reasons that a couple becomes a couple, you can't understand what happens to them as their marriage unravels.

About this title

About the Authors

Kate Scharff, MSW is an individual, couple, and family psychotherapist with over 25 years of clinical experience. She is also a senior divorce consultant, mediator, parenting coordinator, and Collaborative Divorce practitioner. Ms. Scharff is a founder and principal of the Collaborative Practice Center of Greater Washington. She teaches internationally on divorce, psychodynamic psychotherapy, parenting, and alternate dispute resolution. She regularly conducts workshops and seminars for family law attorneys, mental health professionals, and multidisciplinary audiences. Ms. Scharff is the author of many journal articles and book chapters, and of the books Therapy Demystified: An Insider’s Guide to Getting the Right Help (Marlowe & Co., 2004) and (with Lisa Herrick) Navigating Emotional Currents in Collaborative Divorce: A Guide to Enlightened Team Practice (American Bar Association, 2010). Her pieces appear frequently in online and print media; she is a regular contributor to the Divorce section of The Huffington Post. Ms. Scharff maintains a private practice in Washington, D.C., and Bethesda, Maryland. Her website is www.katescharff.com

Lisa Herrick, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a founding member of the West Falls Psychotherapy Group in Falls Church, VA. She has worked with couples, families, and children for over 20 years in her clinical practice. She is a former President of the D.C. Academy of Collaborative Professionals (DCACP) and currently serves on their board. She is also a member of Collaborative Professionals of Northern Virginia (CPNV). Dr. Herrick has completed over 65 Collaborative cases on multidisciplinary teams and has worked as a Collaborative Coach and as a Child Specialist. She is a founding member of the Collaborative Practice Training Institute (CPTI) and offers trainings throughout the country in working with high conflict parents and in Collaborative practice. In August 2010, she opened, with several Collaborative colleagues, the Collaborative Practice Center of Greater Washington, a place where attorneys, mental health professionals, and financial experts can share office space and work together to advance Collaborative practice in the Washington, D.C., area.

Edition details

• Publisher: American Bar Association
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1616320745
• ISBN 13: 9781616320744
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224