Moral Development in Couple Therapy
A New Approach to Kohlberg's Stages

This innovative text utilizes Kohlberg?s stages of moral development, demonstrating how they can be effectively applied to couple and marriage therapy.

Facilitating moral stage development has been found to improve couples? ability to relate to one another, enhancing trust, transparency, communication, and intimacy. Based on empirical research and Kohlberg?s classic stages of development, the book showcases the Conceptual Template, a tool for therapists to guide their clients in thinking more objectively about the reality being experienced, their own subjectivity, and how to work together as a couple to mindfully solve problems. With an extensive Instructional Manual as well as a transcript of the author teaching the Conceptual Template process to a therapist, Moral Development in Couple Therapy illustrates a highly practical approach to counseling that helps couples achieve a more rational level of moral judgment and reasoning.

Filled with practical case studies and written in an accessible manner, this text is an indispensable resource for couple therapists and other mental health professionals working with couples to resolve conflict.

.

1. The Science Of Morality 2. The Underlying Psychodynamics and Interactions of Adult Pre-conventional (Stages 1 and/or 2) with Conventional (Stage 3) Moral Reasoning: A Clinical and Behavioral Perspective 3. Typical Interactions Of Couples Conventional In Moral Judgment/Reasoning 4. Historical Events of the 1960’s and 1970’s Affecting Moral Development 5. Implementing the Conceptual Template to Facilitate Moral Development 6. Subjectivity and Objectivity: Moral Reasoning 7. Cognition: Subjectivity and/or Relativity and Objectivity 8. Clinically Identifying Moral Subjectivism/Relativism through Implementing Moral Dilemmas 9. Organization of the Conceptual Template 10. Universal Conceptual Template Program

Steven I. Ries, EdD, is a counselor in private practice in Maui, Hawaii, and was the co-founder and program director of the Human Development Institute in La Grange, Illinois. Previously in his career, he worked as a graduate research assistant under Lawrence Kohlberg at the Center for Moral Education at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Later, Kohlberg became his dissertation committee chairman and Ries graduated with his doctorate from Harvard University in 1981.