Author
Denver private practice clinical psychologist Susan Heitler, Ph.D., educated at Harvard and then NYU, has led the way in bringing new advances in understandings of conflict resolution to the field of psychotherapy and also to marriage education.
Dr. Heitler has published extensively including (1) From Conflict to Resolution,: Skills & Strategies for Individual, Couple, and Family Therapy, offering a conceptual framework for guidng integrative treatment; 2) The Power of Two: Secrets to a Strong & Loving Marriage, a book and workbook combo for couples; and (3) Prescriptions Without Pills: For Relief from Depression, Anger, Anxiety, and More, a book for therapists as well as for the general public. Internationally, Dr. Heitler's books have been translated into six foreign language editions.
Dr. Heitler’s journal articles focus primarily on integrating individual and couple therapy treatments. “Ethical Risks in Conducting Individual Therapy With a Married Client: The Case for New Standards of Care,” published in Practice Innovations, challenges the assumption that different therapists should treat each spouse and also the marriage relationship. To the contrary, she reviews the research and offers case examples showing the importance of what she refers to as “the one-therapist rule,” the principle that one therapist must handle the full marital system—with individual sessions for both spouses and also for the couple relationship scheduled as needed.
Frequently quoted in popular magazines and news articles, Dr. Heitler may have set the record for the most couples written up in the popular former Ladies Home Journal column, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?"
Meanwhile her 300+ blog posts on psychologytoday.com, which include what therapists need to know about parental alienation and also a relationship-deficits perspective on narcissism, have received over 27 million reads.
Dr. Heitler has given continuing education webinars and workshops worldwide on treating narcissism, on conflict resolution in couples therapy, on visualization techniques for accelerating treatment of negative emotions, and on how to do couples therapy—speaking to American state psychological associations and in India, Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon. In the Middle East she was invited to give the keynote address at the first pan-Arab psychology conference where she was asked to speak on the how-to's of collaborative conflict resolution.
A front-runner in the integrative therapy movement, Dr. Heitler refers to her integrative conceptual map of emotional health, distress, and psychotherapy as "conflict resolution theory." Her master therapist video The Angry Couple, shown in marriage counseling training programs world-wide, uses similar terminology. Most recently she was invited by APA to produce their “intensive” (a. new APA continuing educaiton series) on treating marriage problems, a 20-credit course called “Effective Couples Therapy.”
prescriptionswithoutpills.com
effectivecouplestherapy.com
