Working with Couples and Families in a Time of Polarization

Registration URL: https://www.pcfine.org

The couple and families therapists we see in therapy are not immune to strains caused by the deep political polarization in our country; nor are we as therapists. In this online program, Dr. Bill Doherty, expert clinician, educator, and researcher, will provide a road map for addressing political polarization in therapy with couples and families. He will address the sources of today's polarization, special assessments for couples in conflict over politics, and tools for helping them buffer their relationships against these political stressors. He will also discuss how therapists can tend to their own politically charged feelings in doing this work.

At the conclusion of this program, the participants will be able to discuss how political stress can affect couple and family relationships, and ways to assess these effects.

At the conclusion of this program, the participants will be able to describe tools for helping couples and families cope with political differences in ways that buffer their relationships and potentially improve them.

At the conclusion of this program, the participants will be able to describe guidelines for therapists when their own politically charged feelings are activated in working with polarized couples and families.Dr. Doherty will provide a perspective and examples of clinical work with parents and adult children using clinical case viognettes and video tapes.

Primary Instructor: Bill Doherty, Ph.D., LMFT 

Instructor Bio: Bill Doherty is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota where he directed the doctoral Marriage and Family Program. Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, he co-founded Braver Angels, a citizen initiative bring conservatives and liberals together to counteract political polarization and restore the fraying social fabric of American society. He is co-author of the book Helping Couples on the Brink of Divorce: Discernment Counseling for Troubled Relationships.

Event Type:
Live Interactive Virtual

Number of CEUs: 3.000

Start Date of Activity: 05/02/2026

End Date of Activity:05/02/2026

Bibliographical Sources to be used in this training:

Laszloffy, T.A. & Platt, J.J. (2024), Divided we fall: Constructive dialoguing about our political differences within family therapy training. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 50(3), 523-544. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12721Solomonov, N. & Barber, J.P. (2019).

Conducting psychotherapy in the Trump era: Therapists' perspectives on political self-disclosure, the therapeutic alliance, and politics in the therapy room. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 75(9), 1508-1518. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22801Finkel, E.J. et al (2020).

Political sectarianism in America: A poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion, and moralization poses a threat to democracy. Science, 370(6516), 533-536. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe1715