Couple Resilience ― Emerging Perspectives

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.

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) ofPositive couple therapy: Using we-stories to enhance resilience, 2014, Routledge Press and has contributed numerous book chapters and articles to professional journals. She reviews forFamily 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).