Sympathetic Nervous System Synchrony in Couple Therapy

Abstract

Acknowledgements:We wish to thank Jarno Mikkonen for his contribution in coding MATLAB scripts, as well as Petri Kinnunen and Lauri Viljanto for technical help with autonomic nervous system measuring equipment. Correspondence

The Relational Mind in Couple Therapy: A Bateson‐Inspired View of Human Life as an Embodied Stream

“…In the RM project, many of the results surprised the research team. One less surprising result was that in the sessions as a whole, the participants’ SNS activity became synchronized during therapy (Karvonen, Kykyri, Kaartinen, Penttonen, & Seikkula, ). This was observed by analyzing the concordance of the pairs’ electrodermal activity during couple therapy sessions.…”

“…In the RM project, the EDA concordance increased between the spouses during therapy (Karvonen, ). This may signal improvements in their relationship as part of the therapy process.…”

“…Conversely, in a successful therapy process, attunement may increase in parallel with the spoken dialogue. Regarding the synchrony between the therapists, and the synchrony of the therapist–client pairs, Karvonen () found no significant changes.…”

“…In this paper, we seek to summarize our main observations, considering their clinical relevance. The research results have been published in several papers; hence, in this paper we shall give only a condensed description of the design, the methods of analysis, and the results (Karvonen, ; Seikkula, Karvonen, Kykyri, Kaartinen, & Penttonen, ).…”

Affective Arousal During Blaming in Couple Therapy: Combining Analyses of Verbal Discourse and Physiological Responses in Two Case Studies

“…Change in Multi-actor Therapeutic Dialogues, which aims at increasing understanding of attunement and synchrony in couple therapy at various levels, including both verbal and nonverbal interaction and ANS responses (Karvonen et al 2016;Seikkula et al 2015). The project is being conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland in collaboration with three other European universities.…”