The First Argument is a clearly written, practical, and useful guide for embracing the shadow side of partnerships. Through helpful exercises, sound suggestions, and personal experience, the author explains how relationships are strengthened by making room for the unavoidable conflicts and arguments-especially the first one-that are part of every intimate relationship. Her careful guidance, based on rich experience as a psychotherapist, can help couples move toward the deeper love and intimacy they seek. --John Amodeo, Ph.D., author of The Authentic Heart and Love & Betrayal
In The First Argument, Sharon Rivkin establishes the link between each partner's developmental wounding and the presentation of those psychological injuries in the current problems of the relationship. This link between past and present, individual problems and joint problems, is demonstrated so succinctly that the ever-present tendency to blame the partner can be circumvented. Since reading her book, I have begun to use the technique in my own work with couples. Informative and easy to read! --Bruce W. Scotton, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco; certified Jungian analyst; and editor of the award-winning Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology
Product Description
Do you have the same argument over and over?
Do you feel helpless and stuck in your relationship?
Do you seem to argue about silly things?
Do you lack intimacy in your relationship?
The First Argument: Cutting To The Root of Intimate Conflictis the distillation of Sharon's 26 years of experience as a marriage and family therapist. It springs from one fundamental insight: a couple's current conflict has its roots in their very first argument. By revisiting that first argument and working through it, the charge around the current conflict greatly defuses.
It also provides an extraordinarily effective and economical method for breaking through layers of entrenched negativity to recover the true intimacy that lies below. The First Argument is a practical and useful guide for exploring, identifying, and working through the conflict that arises in relationships.
Through exercises, suggestions, and personal experiences, the book shows how relationships can actually be strengthened by making room for and understanding the inevitable first argument, and those that follow. As demonstrated succinctly in Sharon's book, the tendency to blame the partner can be redirected by looking at the link between past and present arguments. It is a book that shows potential transformation and healing from the very thing that could be the seed of destruction...the first argument. As Sharon states in her book, the poison is the remedy, and in working with the first argument, we learn that the very thing we dread and avoid-the root of our conflict-is also the source of our healing.
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