Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) is a structured approach to couples therapy developed by Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt, based on the insight that the partners we choose in adult life are unconsciously shaped by our earliest relational experiences — and that the conflicts that arise between partners are not random, but carry within them the unresolved emotional material of childhood.
The name comes from the Latin word imago — image. Each of us carries an unconscious composite image of the significant people from our early lives: their strengths, their limitations, the ways they made us feel seen and the ways they fell short. Without being aware of it, we tend to be drawn to partners who resemble this imago — replicating both the positive qualities and the specific emotional wounds of our early attachment relationships.
This is not a flaw in human nature. In Imago understanding, it is an attempt at healing — the unconscious bringing us back to unfinished emotional business, this time with the possibility of a different outcome.
Imago Relationship Therapy works from the premise that romantic partnerships — however painful they become — contain within them the conditions for deep healing and growth, if both partners can be helped to understand what is actually happening between them and to engage with each other in a fundamentally different way.
The central therapeutic tool of IRT is the Imago Dialogue — a highly structured three-stage communication process that creates the conditions for genuine mutual understanding between partners who may have become entrenched in reactive, escalating, or withdrawing patterns of interaction.
Mirroring — one partner reflects back exactly what the other has said, as accurately and completely as possible, without interpretation, without defence, and without response. The role is simply to ensure that what was said was heard. For many couples, the experience of being truly heard — without the other partner immediately defending or counter-attacking — is itself unfamiliar and transformative.
Validation — the listening partner acknowledges that what their partner has said makes sense — that from their partner's perspective and history, what they feel is understandable. Validation is not agreement. It is the recognition that the other person's inner experience has its own logic.
Empathy — the listening partner identifies and names what their partner might be feeling — moving from the cognitive acknowledgment of validation into affective attunement. This is often the most powerful and the most difficult stage: the experience of being truly felt, not only understood, by the person with whom one is in conflict.
The Imago Dialogue does not aim to produce agreement or compromise on the surface level of conflict. It aims to shift the relational field itself — to move both partners from reactivity to presence, from defence to curiosity, from experiencing the other as threat to experiencing the other as a person with their own inner world.
A central dimension of Imago work is the exploration of how each partner's childhood experiences — within their family of origin, their early attachment relationships, the specific ways they were seen or unseen, celebrated or criticised, held or abandoned — have shaped the needs, wounds, and emotional patterns they bring into the adult relationship.
Imago therapy helps partners see each other not only as the person in front of them, but as someone who — like themselves — is carrying the full weight of a personal history. This reframing, from adversary to wounded fellow traveller, is often one of the most significant shifts in the therapeutic process.
This is what distinguishes Imago from purely communication-focused approaches. It does not only teach partners to speak and listen differently. It helps them understand why certain interactions produce such disproportionate emotional intensity — because they are activating wounds that predate the relationship itself.
Imago Relationship Therapy is particularly well-suited to integration with Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) — the most extensively researched model in couples therapy, developed by Professor Les Greenberg and Dr. Sue Johnson.
Where EFT focuses on identifying and restructuring the negative interactional cycles that maintain emotional disconnection — working in-the-moment with emotional experience as it arises in the session — Imago provides a complementary structured framework through the Dialogue that gives partners a reliable, repeatable tool for engaging differently between sessions and in the heat of conflict.
At IsraClinic, Ilana Gurevich — a senior EFT therapist who trained under the supervision of Professor Les Greenberg — works with the integration of EFT and Imago-informed approaches in couples work. Valery Kravitz, clinical programme curator and certified art therapist, integrates Imago Dialogue principles with EFT and expressive arts in couples sessions — creating a multi-modal therapeutic container that addresses both the emotional and the creative dimensions of intimate relationship.
Imago Relationship Therapy is indicated for couples experiencing:
Persistent conflict that escalates or fails to resolve — the same argument, in different forms, indefinitely.
Emotional distance or withdrawal — the feeling that genuine connection has been lost.
Communication breakdown — where partners feel chronically unheard, misunderstood, or unable to speak without the conversation deteriorating.
Relational rupture — the aftermath of infidelity, a significant breach of trust, or a period of crisis.
Major life transitions — the arrival of children, illness, bereavement, retirement, or relocation that has destabilised the relationship.
Couples who sense potential but cannot access it without professional support.
Imago therapy is also used preventively — with premarital couples who wish to understand their relational patterns before they become entrenched, and with couples who are not in crisis but want to deepen their connection and communication.
Sessions are conducted with both partners together. The therapist guides the couple through the Imago Dialogue and other structured exercises, observing the relational dynamic, introducing the conceptual framework where useful, and helping both partners move through the affective experience the dialogue makes available.
The therapeutic process is typically medium to longer term — meaningful shifts in deeply established relational patterns require sustained work. Imago-based intensive formats — concentrated work over a shorter period — can also be accommodated online.
All couples work at IsraClinic is delivered within the framework of the Psychoergonomic Method — ensuring the approach is tailored to this specific couple's history, pattern, and therapeutic needs, and coordinated where relevant with any individual treatment either partner is receiving at the clinic.
Sessions are conducted in English, Russian and Hebrew.
If your relationship is characterised by recurring conflict, emotional distance, or the sense that something important has been lost between you — professional support can make a significant difference. The Imago framework offers not only a method, but a way of understanding what is happening in your relationship that many couples find deeply clarifying and relieving in itself.
IsraClinic accepts couples for in-person consultation in Tel Aviv and online, in English, Russian and Hebrew. No referral is required.
Lead Therapists: Ilana Gurevich — Licensed Psychologist, Senior EFT Therapist | Valery Kravitz — Clinical Programme Curator, Certified Art Therapist | IsraClinic | Last reviewed: 2026
If you and your partner are ready to engage differently with each other — Imago Relationship Therapy provides a structured and deeply human path forward. Our team is available in English, Russian and Hebrew.
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