Transform Your Work With Couples

Working with couples can be some of the most meaningful—and challenging—work we do as therapists. Imago Clinical Training offers a structured, relational, and experiential approach to helping couples understand the patterns that bring them into conflict, deepen emotional connection, and create new ways of relating to one another. Throughout the training, you will learn both the theory and clinical practice of Imago Relationship Therapy, with opportunities to experience the model personally, practice interventions, observe demonstrations, and receive support as you begin integrating Imago into your own work. Our goal is not simply to teach you a set of techniques. We want to help you develop the confidence and relational presence to work with couples in ways that feel more grounded, effective, creative, and rewarding.

What You Will Learn

During the training, you will learn how to:

Understand couple conflict through the Imago relational paradigm
Identify the developmental and relational patterns underlying recurring conflict
Teach and facilitate the Imago Dialogue
Help partners move from reactivity toward curiosity, empathy, and connection
Work with frustration, rupture, disconnection, and repair
Deepen emotional and relational attunement
Support couples in creating greater safety and intentionality in their relationship
Integrate Imago theory and interventions into your own clinical style

The training is highly experiential and includes teaching, demonstrations, small-group practice, clinical discussion, and opportunities to apply the model to real couples.

Tuition

Tuition is $600 per module and may be paid before each module. A discounted package is also available for participants who would like to register for the complete training together with six months of supervision. Limited reparations seats are available for African American and Indigenous trainees. Please contact Caroline for additional information.

More Than a Training

Learning Imago also connects you with a vibrant professional community. As you move through training and certification, you will have opportunities to connect with other clinicians locally, nationally, and internationally who share an interest in relational healing and transforming the quality of connection in all kinds of relationships. We invest in our trainees beyond the classroom through consultation, supervision, professional resources, and ongoing opportunities for connection and learning. Whether you already specialize in couples therapy or want to feel more confident beginning this work, Imago Clinical Training offers a clear clinical framework while leaving room for you to bring your own personality, experience, and therapeutic style into the work.

Imago Clinical Training Will Help You:

Feel more competent, confident, relaxed, and joyful in your work with couples.
Understand the unconscious dynamics behind why couples are drawn to each other — and why conflict naturally arises.
Guide couples to uncover the root patterns fueling disconnection and repeated conflict.
Teach couples to communicate safely and consciously, reducing blame, shame, and criticism.
Help couples heal together, strengthen their connection, and work as a team.
Expand their relational skills so they can create the relationship they’ve always longed for.
Deepen your own self-awareness of your core relationship patterns.

Level One: Core Clinical Training

An intensive, interactive experience grounded in Imago theory and practice.
A lively, supportive learning community with plenty of encouragement and connection.
Hands-on practice to integrate theory and master key Imago skills.
Engaging learning materials: videos, live demonstrations, readings, and real-life dialogue practice.
Tuition: $3,000 (payment plans and scholarships available)
CEs available.

Level Two: Supervision & Certification

Six monthly group consultation/supervision sessions to help you integrate your new clinical skills ($100 each; $600 total).
Requirement to prepare and pass a final videotape of your work ($195).
Completion of Level Two qualifies you to become a Certified Imago Therapist!

Standardized Learning Objectives for Imago Clinical Training, Module 1

Lesson 1

View, conceptualize and discuss their clients and couples through the lens of the relational paradigm.
Explain why an increase in positive exchanges between committed partners is important.
Identify needs that underlie a partner’s current frustrations with one another.
Facilitate partner’s understanding of how the past influences the present.

Lesson 2

Discuss the specific steps of the Imago Dialogue and explain the rationale for structuring a couples’ interpersonal dialogue process.
Facilitate a dialogical process between partners.
Define and discuss the role of healthy differentiation in a committed, intimate partnership.
Describe and explain how the rupture and repair of the emotional bond between partners strengthens resilience.

Lesson 3

Manage the challenges that arise when couples resist a structured listening process.
Use sentence stems to maintain an atmosphere of safety during the dialogue process.
Distinguish between the reptilian brain, the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex and be able to describe the role the brain plays in emotional co-regulation between partners.
Discuss the role of mindfulness in conscious, intimate and committed partnerships.

Lesson 4

Describe the importance of intentional romantic behavior and pleasurable activities in marital outcomes.
Describe the necessity of right brain, non-verbal communication in adult love relationships
Explain the role of human touch in a securely attached marital relationship.
Explain and discuss the role of playfulness and spontaneous play behavior in restoring safe, emotional bonds.

Lesson 5

Assess a couple through a developmental lens, identifying each partners’ core wound and adaptive style.
Identify how developmental wounds and childhood adaptations impact marital dynamics.
Describe how a corrective emotional experience between partners helps marital/individual health and satisfaction.
Explain why the dialogue process is a corrective emotional experience.

Lesson 6

Name two ways that children are wounded in childhood.
Describe how the socialization process in childhood influences adaptation and mate selection.
Explain why partners’ unmet needs provide clues to a blueprint for growth.
Discuss and illustrate how to transform marital power struggles.

Lesson 7

Define and explain re-imaging and why it is an initial task in couples’ therapy.
Describe and direct a process of revisioning the relationship.
Name 7 tasks of a conscious love relationship.
Explain why commitment between partners may be essential to marital improvement and happiness.

Lesson 8

Explain why frustration between partners is an important effect to address between partners.
Demonstrate how couples can translate their frustrations into small, specific requests for change.
Give an illustration of “stretching” and how stretching facilitates a sense of greater wholeness and aliveness.
Describe how and why change happens in small, specific and behavioral actions.