Couples therapists spend years in training with a vision of seeing couples thrive. Too often, many therapists burn out. Clients drop out. Couples leave without real change. And the therapist is left wondering if real change was ever really possible.
Conventional couples and sex therapy focuses on communication, reducing anxiety, and helping people feel more emotionally safe. The Crucible® Approach was built on a different premise entirely.
Dr. David Schnarch spent decades studying what it takes for people to change. What he built is a comprehensive therapeutic approach designed to grow people into more evolved versions of themselves, capable of much richer relationships. An approach focused on human development, sexual potential and interpersonal neurobiology, the Sexual Crucible® approach provides a fresh perspective for how to see people, relationships, and yourself as a therapist.
Since Dr. Schnarch’s sudden passing in 2020, no formal introduction to the Crucible® Approach has been available for clinicians. That changes in September 2026.
Training Details
Dates:
Wed., Sept. 9, 23, 30 & Oct, 7 & 21, 2026
Time
3:30 to 6:30 PM Central Time
Format
Online Live via Zoom
Sessions
5 sessions, 3 hours each (15 hours total)
ce credits
Pending: AASECT and NBCC
instructor
Amy Fuller, PhD, LMFT-S, LPC-S, CST-S
An international crucible therapy education center training
Introduction to Crucible® Therapy
This is a five-session online training that gives clinicians a working understanding of this approach. Participants will learn what a Crucible therapist sees, how they think, and what they do in the room with a couple who is stuck.
Is this training for you?
Are you frustrated with mainstream models that fall short with your most challenging couples?
Are you brand new to the Crucible approach and curious if it is really different?
Have you read the books but want to see how the ideas actually translate into clinical practice?
Have you had some exposure to the approach but want to learn more?
Are you a mental health professional enrolled in a clinical mental health, counseling or family therapy masters program, a provisionally licensed therapist, or a fully licensed practitioner of couples and family therapy?
If you answered yes to any of these, you are in the right place.
By the end of this training, participants will:
See couples differently.
You will have a framework for understanding what is actually happening in the room, beneath the conflict, the distance, and the desire problems couples bring through your door. Develop a different kind of case conceptualization.
Think like a Crucible therapist.
You will leave with a working vocabulary and a clinical lens that you can begin applying immediately, and that will deepen with every training and consultation that follows.
Know what this work looks like in practice.
Through clinical video and case illustration, you will see seasoned Crucible therapists doing this work, not just talking about it. You will see clearly what sets this approach apart.
Have a resource you will use for years.
The Crucible® Introductory Manual and comprehensive glossary you receive is the first of its kind, drawn from years of direct training with Dr. Schnarch and the colleagues who learned alongside him.
Inside the Training: What You Will Experience
Each session builds on the last, taking you deeper into the approach and closer to thinking like a Crucible therapist. Here is what we will cover.
Day 1: What is Crucible Therapy?
We begin where every good therapist begins, with a framework for seeing. You will be introduced to the Crucible® Approach, the man who created it, and the foundational idea that relationships are not just where problems happen but where people grow. We will explore what it means to do therapy that talks to the best in people, and what it takes to make real contact.
Day 2: What Does Therapy Actually Look Like?
On Day 2, we get into the therapy room. You will see how the Four Points of Balance shape every clinical decision a Crucible therapist makes, understand a collaborative alliance and why it matters, and learn how mind mapping can make process work so much easier and sharper.
Day 3: Seeing What Is Happening in Front of You
The heart of Crucible work is the ability to see clearly: the relationship dynamics, the sexual dynamics, and the moments that matter. We will explore how to map what you are observing, understand fusion and desire discrepancy, and recognize the elicitation window when it opens.
Day 4: How People Grow
Growth in the Crucible® Approach is not comfortable and it is not accidental. This session explores gridlock, the growth versus comfort cycle, and what it means to hold the heat when clients want to run from it. Drawing on Dr. Schnarch’s framework of waking up and swimming toward the surface, we examine what it actually looks like when people begin to change.
Day 5: The Cutting Edge of Crucible® Therapy
Dr. Schnarch spent his final years pushing the approach into new territory. Crucible® Neurobiological Therapy brings interpersonal neurobiology into the heart of the clinical model. This session introduces you to his most recent and most exciting contributions to the field.
The Crucible Introductory Manual and Glossary
Dr. Schnarch dedicated years to training the next generation of Crucible therapists but never updated his primary Clinical textbook, Constructing the Sexual Crucible, as the approach evolved over the years.
This manual represents the first attempt to consolidate that body of teaching together in one place: the concepts, the language, the framework, organized and accessible for clinicians who are stepping into this work for the first time, as well as those looking to fill in gaps and build a more solid foundation. The manual includes clinical vignettes and dialogue written in right brain language, to help a clinician have a picture of how the approach looks in practice.
The comprehensive glossary serves as a reference for the student with the vocabulary to continue growing, seek consultation, and engage more deeply in further Crucible training. It is a living document, born out of years of direct study with Dr. Schnarch and translating his material into clinical training material.
This training is a beginning, not an endpoint. Applying the Crucible® Approach well requires extensive training and ongoing consultation, and there are clear pathways to continue developing your self and skills as a Crucible Therapist.
1. Join a Consultation Group
Apply what you are learning to your actual cases with guidance from experienced Crucible therapists. ICTEC offers consultation groups for clinicians at various levels of experience. A consultation group is one of the most effective ways to develop yourself as a Crucible Therapist between formal trainings.
2. Crucible® Fundamentals
Take your foundation deeper with Lacy Stump’s Crucible Fundamentals training, offered through ICTEC in the spring. Building on the vocabulary and framework you develop here, this training moves you further into the clinical application of the approach.
3. Person of the Therapist Retreat
Barbara Fairfield’s Person of the Therapist workshop offers an experiential deep dive into the differentiation challenges that Crucible therapists face in their own work. It is widely regarded as some of the most personally and professionally significant training available through ICTEC.
4. Attend a Clinical Practicum
A clinical practicum is the most intense training offered within the Crucible community. A practicum involves working through actual case material in a group setting with role play, case conceptualization and space for personal growth. Visit th ICTEC Trainings and Workshops page to see what is coming.
“The therapist is not the teacher. Life is the teacher. Life is much more elegant than most of us are willing to accept. Getting people to the point that they are strong enough to embrace life on its own terms is what the Crucible is all about.”
Dr. David Schnarch, from a live professional training presentation
Tuition
We want this training to be accessible. Tuition is tiered by licensure level.
Payment is made at the time of registration. Alternative payment may be made via Zelle to amy@amyfullerphd.com or by check to: 4545 Bissonnet #289, Bellaire, TX 77401.
Dr. Fuller trained in the Crucible® Approach with Dr. David Schnarch from 2012 until his passing in 2020, with Dr. Ruth Morehouse from 2016 to 2024, and has participated in consultation with Barbara Fairfield and Grace Whitman since 2017.
The Crucible Approach is central to her clinical practice, her teaching, and her supervision of therapists and sex therapy candidates. She is committed to furthering the approach and training the next generation of Crucible therapists.
Dr. Fuller earned her Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Abilene Christian University in 1998 and her PhD in MFT from St. Mary’s University in 2006. Dr. Fuller practices in Houston specializing in couples, trauma, and sex therapy (amyfullerphd.com). She is the founder of Fuller Life Family Therapy Institute, established in 2012, a nonprofit organization providing intensive training for therapists and accessible therapy to underserved communities across Houston (fullerlifefamilytherapy.org). Since 2018, she has served as the Sexuality Specialization Director in the doctoral program in Professional Counseling at Kairos University, which prepares students for AASECT certification as Certified Sex Therapists.
She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Supervisor, Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor, and a Certified Sex Therapist and Approved Supervisor through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor.
What is the Crucible® Approach?
Developed by Dr. David Schnarch, the Crucible® Approach is unlike any other model in the field. Here is what sets it apart.
Click on each of the following boxes to read about the approach.
The Crucible: A Different Way of Seeing
Marriage is a people-growing machine, not a problem to be solved.
Based on developing anxiety tolerance, not anxiety reduction. Treatment occurs at a higher level of intensity by design.
Presenting concerns are not pathology.
A brain to brain therapy. The goal is to create genuine moments of meeting that facilitate change and raise functioning.
The person of the therapist is critical to the model.
A differentiation based approach.
Sex is a vehicle for intimacy and human growth, not just a behavior to be treated.
Can treat personalities that fail in other approaches.
Differentiation: The Core Concept
The ability to hold onto yourself while staying meaningfully connected to someone who matters deeply to you.
The more important your partner is to you, the higher the level of differentiation required.
Differentiation is not individuation. It is about becoming your best self in close proximity to another person.
Most relationships function on other-validated intimacy. The Crucible® Approach works toward self-validated intimacy.
Fusion is emotional dependence where two people borrow functioning from each other and avoid what needs to be addressed.
The Four Points of Balance
The 4 points of balance provide an operational definition of differentiation. Where other therapies focus on helping couples feel better or emotional safety, Crucible therapy aims for human development and works with the way attachment is showing up.
Solid Flexible Self: knowing who you are even under pressure to conform.
Quiet Mind and Calm Heart: the ability to self-soothe and contain your own reactivity.
Grounded Responding: proportionate responses rather than reacting to your partner’s reactivity.
Meaningful Endurance: the willingness to tolerate discomfort for growth.
Everything a Crucible therapist does is designed to increase clients 4 points of balance.
A Collaborative Approach to Human Development
A collaborative alliance begins with self-confrontation.
In Crucible Therapy, clients focus on their own behavior and impact rather than the other person’s.
The collaborative alliance is not about feeling supported. It is a shared commitment to growth that sometimes requires the therapist to say what no one wants to hear.
Many people have only experienced collusive, combative, or no alliance at all.
The therapist seeks to establish collaboration without losing intensity or becoming combative.
Mind Mapping: A way to Work with Process
The brain’s hardwired ability to track what another person thinks, feels, wants, and intends. Mind Mapping is a survival function.
Traumatic mind mapping occurs when mapping another person’s mind is itself traumatic.
Antisocial empathy occurs when mind mapping ability is used not to connect pro-socially, but to harm. People with antisocial empathy know exactly where another person is vulnerable and use that knowledge deliberately. It is far more common than most therapists are trained to recognize.
Normal marital sadism is very common and almost never addressed in conventional couples therapy.
Regressions: The Mariana Trench Model
A sudden drop in functioning when anxiety exceeds a person’s window of tolerance. It can look like yelling, blaming, crying, confusion, numbing, or many other presentations.
Steady-state regressions are long-term and often invisible to the person living inside them.
Reactive regressions are a sign of progress. When you begin to wake up, you start feeling things that are hard. Getting better can make things harder before they get easier.
Raising functioning is a central goal. Higher functioning means greater capacity for intimacy, integrity, connection with one’s self and genuine care for others.
What the Therapist Does
Moves toward what is happening, makes it overt, and holds the heat collaboratively.
Helps clients see there is no way around their two-choice dilemmas, only through them.
Speaks to the integrity of the client, not their fears and anxieties.
Seeks to know their own blindspots. A therapist cannot bring clients to a higher level of differentiation than they have personally reached.
Sex and Desire
Sexual desire problems are among the most common and most misunderstood reasons couples seek therapy.
Low sexual desire in long-term relationships is not inevitable. It is predictable and addressable.
Sexual potential increases with age and development. The best sex of your life is not behind you.
Sex is a window into the relationship, the self, and the capacity for real intimacy.
The high-desire and low-desire dynamic is not about who wants sex more. It is about who controls the relationship.
How People Grow
Most people come to therapy wanting relief from the pressure. The Crucible® Approach uses that pressure to promote a more solid self.
Survival mechanisms from childhood show up in adult relationships as regressions, avoidance, and reactivity.
Most people avoid what is challenging. Growth requires risk and is made unilaterally.
Dr. Schnarch describes a common pattern of living asleep. Waking up means confronting what you have been avoiding.
People marry at the same level of differentiation. Growth in one partner pressures the other to rise or resist.
