Introduction: The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of short-term intensive dynamic psychotherapy and emotion-focused therapy on alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital in betrayed women.
Method: The present study was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group with a three-month follow-up period. The statistical population of the study consisted of all women affected by their spouse's infidelity who referred to psychological clinics in District 1 of Tehran in the second half of 1403, of which 45 people were selected purposively and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and a control group. The research data collection tools included the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire by Garnevsky et al. (2001), the Toronto Emotional Aphasia Questionnaire (1986), the Luthans Psychological Capital Questionnaire (2007), and the Marital Infidelity Questionnaire by Yenisri and Kokdemir (2006). The data were analyzed using mixed analysis of variance.
Results: The results of the analysis of variance showed that both short-term intensive dynamic psychotherapy and emotion-focused therapy were effective in improving mood aphasia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital in infidelity women, and this effect was stable at the follow-up stage in both interventions. The results of the Tukey post hoc test showed that the effect of short-term intensive dynamic psychotherapy intervention on psychological capital in women affected by marital infidelity is greater than that of emotion-focused therapy intervention. While emotion-focused therapy has a greater effect on improving alexithymia and emotional regulation than short-term intensive dynamic psychotherapy.
Conclusion: the results of this study showed that both short-term intensive dynamic psychotherapy and emotion-focused therapy are effective in improving alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital in betrayed women. Therefore, the awareness of couple therapists, counselors, psychologists, and other specialists about these treatments can be helpful in reducing marital infidelity and divorce in women.