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Duet For Life: Is Alexithymia A Key Note In Couples’ Empathy, Emotional Connection, Relationship Dissatisfaction, And Therapy Outcomes?, Pamela D. Mcneill

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Alexithymia is an emotion-related construct involving difficulties identifying, describing, and processing emotion, which hinder the capacity to provide empathy, and the development of emotionally connected intimate relationships. To date, there has been minimal investigation of the impact of alexithymia on community couples’ relationships, no associated examination of clinical couples, and no consideration of therapists’ knowledge of alexithymia as a source of influence in couple therapy outcomes.

Studies 1 and 2 investigated alexithymia in 170 community couples and 17 therapy couples, respectively, in association with their empathy provided, empathy received, emotional connection components (i.e., turn toward, turn away, turn against, positive …

Transitioning Into Parenthood : Family Leisure And Heterosexual Couples In New Zealand, David Lamb

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The key research question on which this study was based concerned the transition period from first time pregnancy through to first time parenthood for heterosexual couples in Christchurch, New Zealand. The particular focus on this study was on how this transition impacted upon access, opportunity and experiences of family leisure. As a result this study can claim to be longitudinal as it follows a number of couples from the stage of pregnancy into early parenthood. A number of subsidiary questions were developed to explore the different dimensions of the key research question in terms of: the impact of gender; the …