ACCEPTANCE VERSUS CHANGE INTERVENTIONS IN BEHAVIORAL COUPLE THERAPY -IMPACT ON COUPLES IN-SESSION COMMUNICATION

Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) attempts to improve Tradi tional Behavioral Couple Therapy (TBCT) by incorporating an emphasis o n promoting acceptance into TBCT's emphasis on behavioral change. This study examined changes in couples' communication over the course of I BCT and TBCT. Early, middle, and late sessions were coded to measure c ouples' communication of acceptance. Results showed that IBCT couples expressed more nonblaming descriptions of problems and more soft emoti ons than TBCT couples during late stages of therapy. IBCT couples sign ificantly increased their nonblaming description of problems and signi ficantly decreased their expressions of hard emotions and their proble matic communication over time. Results support the hypothesis that str uctural differences between the therapies affect initial levels of emo tional expression in session. Increases in nonblaming descriptions of problems were significantly correlated with increases in marital satis faction.