Starts 24 October 2023

1. Participation In a “Getting the Love You Want Couples Workshop” led by a Certified Couples Workshop Presenter® prior to admission into training. (Note: Participation should be with one’s committed, intimate partner. Single therapists may attend with a close friend, relative, or colleague of either gender). This must be done before training.
2. Possession of an advanced degree (masters or doctorate degree) in the mental health field (the common degrees are M.A. or M.S. in counseling or psychology, M.S.W. in social work, M.Div. in pastoral counseling, Ph.D. in clinical psychology, M.D. in psychiatry. See our Professional Facilitator Program if you don’t have these qualifications.)
3. Membership in a recognized professional association (i.e. NASW for clinical social workers, AAMFT for marriage and family therapists, AAPC for pastoral counselors, APA for psychologists, AMA for psychiatrists). Being trained as an Imago Therapist is a couples therapy specialty training and not a training in the formation of becoming a psychotherapists. We want all Imago therapists to be active members of a well recognized professional organization that has standards of ethics and standards of supervision. This organization will be the “gate keeper” for your membership in IRI and/or being a Certified Imago Therapist®. All Imago Therapists must keep their memberships in their professional organization current at all times.
4. We recognize that many in the helping professions get training in massage therapy, rebirthing, gestalt therapy, psychodrama, alcohol and chemical addiction therapy, psychiatric nursing, and many have certifications in these therapies. These are all very useful, but we see them as specialties, just as Imago relationship therapy is a specialty, and they do not qualify one to enter into our training program on the clinical track. Our program is not designed to educate a person to become a fully qualified psychotherapist in the highest meaning of that term. We find it necessary to have already obtained all qualifications, certificates, and licenses with hundreds of hours of supervised internships to have reached the level of being qualified to join a national professional psychotherapy organization on our list before they can become a Certified Imago Therapist®. We allow a person who is in the latter stages of psychotherapy training where they can see clients under supervision to enter the program, but they cannot become a Certified Imago Therapist® until they have been accepted in a nationally recognized professional organization on our list and can legitimately call themselves a psychotherapist.
5. We also recognize that applicants from countries outside the United States have different standards and requirements for becoming a recognized psychotherapist. We are developing standards in each country that fit the local culture. Educational degrees may be different, but we require that you belong to a professional organization that is on our list that requires acceptable minimal professional educational, supervision, and ethical standards. Please contact Kobus van der Merwe if you have any questions about admission requirements.
6. Two letters of recommendation from colleagues who know your work well.
7. License to practice psychotherapy if required by your state.
8. 300 hours of post graduate supervision (150 hours may be group supervision. 150 hours must be one-on-one supervision). Supervision means time spent with a supervisor, not client hours.
9. Proof of malpractice insurance.
10. Copy of graduate degree.
11. A photo of yourself.
12. Each applicant will be considered on his or her own merits. If you do not have all of the above credentials, please attach a cover letter to your applications, which addresses the exception.

 Admission to any program does not guarantee certification.

See also the Professional Facilitator Program for non clinicians

Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT), developed by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. of the Institute for Relationship Therapy in New York, is a paradigm shift in the understanding of marriage and marital therapy.

Imago relationship therapy is a short term therapy that combines insight and practical skills. Couples learn to become safe and intentional, to recognize and repair the wounds of the past, and to restructure frustration and 'incompatibility' as opportunities to reclaim their whole self.

Some of Imago relationship therapy's basic assumptions are the following:

• Our original state is one of wholeness, joy, connection, curiosity, spontaneity, and passion.
• Over/under-parenting and the process of socialization, creates wounding at various stages of childhood development as essential developmental impulses are blocked. The child unconsciously determines the impulse, rather than the parent, to be 'unacceptable' and creates patterned behavior to adapt to the wounding. This is our 'character structure.
• Partner selection is the result of the unconscious desire to complete or correct what was unfinished in childhood. We select a partner who carries both the positive and negative characteristics of our caretakers (the 'Imago'), and who was wounded in the same area, but adapted in a complementary way.
• The adaptation patterns of one partner triggers the wound and survival pattern of the other, creating a cycle of reactivity. Pattern relates to pattern, rather than person relating to person
• Developmentally specific nurturing of each partner helps heal the childhood wound. And paradoxically, our partner will need the very thing that will stretch us out of our own pattern and help us reclaim aspects of our self.
• The more primitive part of the brain stores emotion and memory related to perceived threats to survival. It is atemporal and ignores our rational explanations about its fear. While insight is important, consistent corrective experience is need to change survival patterns.

This therapy helps couples access and integrate those unconscious developmental needs triggered in relational conflict, and become increasingly conscious and intentional in their own behavior in order to create safety for their partner. Frustration and hurt become pathways to create a 'conscious relationship' that is characterized by real love, intimacy, passion, connection, joy and other inherent qualities of our original self.

Healing in Therapy Related to Quality of Relationship

Research has consistently shown that the effectiveness of therapy is more closely related to the relational qualities between therapist and client, particularly affective and cognitive empathy, than to any particular technique. We take in and contain the experience and feelings of the other, and at the same time, act as a differentiated, yet connected self. Cognitive and affective empathy validates a part of the person's self that has long ago been invalidated, rejected, or abandoned by childhood caretakers, and in the resulting pain, by the self. It is kept unconscious because it is locked in self hatred. However, through continued empathic holding and communication, a person can stay for a period in a previously inaccessible area with the help of the other. As the person is 'held' empathetically, s/he gains access to and can begin to incorporate the 'intolerable' part of the self, discovering within it the 'potential' self that has not yet been realized. Traditionally, the therapeutic relationship has been the primary experience of this kind of empathy and safety. IRT empowers couples to learn and use these skills to create safety and healing in their own relationship, and to foster the process of differentiation while remaining deeply connected.

Basic Tool is Imago Couple's Dialogue

The basic tool of Imago Relationship Therapy is a specific form of couple's dialogue that teaches couples to contain their partner, to mirror precisely, to validate (cognitive empathy) the other's experience, and to empathize affectively. Through various processes based on that structure, couples can access childhood wounding and hold the seemingly 'intolerable' aspects of the partner so that s/he can begin to reclaim the imprisoned 'potential' self.

Re-Imaging the Partner

Just as importantly, couples use their knowledge of the childhood wounds to both empower them to become increasingly intentional in the relationship and to discover very specific ways to nurture and reverse the developmental arrest. The image of the partner is transformed from "someone who won't give me what I want or need, etc." to "a person who was wounded, and who can recover their inherent self as I, the partner, create the necessary safety. " The partner can then provide the corrective experience that is needed for healing, and in doing that, stretch out of his/her own character structure. The attitude toward the partner shifts from criticism and blame to compassion, hope, and a commitment to assist the partner in healing, and to reclaim one's fullest self. In this way, emotional safety is created and deepened. Far from being just another communication tool, the skills provide a structure for safe, effective, healing and lasting change. In a revolutionary way, Imago relationship therapy shifts the power of the healing relationship traditionally reserved for the therapist/client relationship into the hands of the couple. 

Copyright 1996, Hedy Schleifer, MA, LMHC. Winter Park, Florida Copies of this article or parts thereof may be reproduced for personal use but must contain copyright information. Reproduction for financial gain is prohibited