Different Doors, Same Aim: How PACT Integrates with Other Couple Therapy Models

by Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT

Over the years, I’ve noticed a recurring question among therapists encountering PACT for the first time. It usually sounds something like this: How does PACT fit with what I already know? How does PACT integrate with other models?

PACT is integrative by design, but what makes it different is its singular focus on secure functioning, with psychobiology used as a means rather than an end.

PACT is an organizing framework oriented around a specific outcome: helping couples become secure-functioning — capable of mutual regulation, collaboration, cooperation, and repair under stress.

Most contemporary couple therapy models are circling the same truths. Where they differ is not in what they see, but in what they are aiming for and how they know they’ve arrived.

Shared Ground: We Are All Treating the Same Animal

Whether you are trained in Gottman, EFT, Imago, RLT, IFS, or PACT, you are treating the same species: a highly social, threat-sensitive primate with unreliable memory, biased perception, and a nervous system that prioritizes survival over harmony.

Across models, there is broad agreement on several foundational points:

• Attachment matters.
• Early experiences shape expectations and reactivity.
• Emotion drives behavior more than insight.
• Under threat, people regress.
• Relationships succeed or fail based on how partners handle stress, repair, and power.

PACT agrees with all of this. Where it diverges is in making secure functioning — not insight, not emotional expression, not narrative coherence — the central organizing aim of treatment.

Secure Functioning Defined

Secure functioning is not a feeling state. It is not emotional closeness. It is not mutual understanding. 

Secure functioning is a performance standard: what partners actually do when it matters most.

Psychobiology enters PACT in service of this aim. It explains why secure functioning is difficult, why it breaks down under stress, and how it can be reliably restored.

Gottman: Outcomes, Patterns, and Predictors

John Gottman’s work gave the field something indispensable: longitudinal outcome data. The identification of interactional patterns that predict relationship stability or dissolution changed how therapists conceptualize conflict, repair, and everyday interaction.

PACT aligns closely with this contribution. We care deeply about observable behavior, moment-to-moment interaction, and what partners actually do with each other when they are tired, scared, angry, or disappointed.

Where PACT adds is by asking a different question: What conditions must be in place for partners to consistently behave in ways that support secure functioning?

When contempt appears, when defensiveness spikes, when partners stonewall or escalate, PACT is less interested in labeling the pattern and more interested in identifying what has failed: regulation, leadership, mutual protection, or shared purpose.

The question is not What pattern is this?
The question is Can this couple function securely in this moment?

Gottman shows us what predicts success. PACT trains couples to execute the behaviors that produce it.

EFT: Attachment Injuries and Emotional Bonding

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) has brought adult attachment to the center of couple therapy in a way that has permanently altered the field. The focus on attachment injuries, bonding moments, and emotional accessibility has helped many couples repair deep ruptures.

PACT fully agrees that attachment injuries matter.

However, PACT diverges in a crucial way: it does not assume that emotional expression reliably leads to safety.

From a secure-functioning perspective, strong emotion is often a sign that regulation has already failed. When partners are flooded, dysregulated, or operating from threat memory, emotional authenticity may increase danger rather than reduce it.

PACT therefore emphasizes something EFT often brackets: Partners must be able to act in the interest of the relationship even when their emotional state argues against it.

Secure functioning requires that partners protect each other from themselves when necessary. Emotional attunement is important — but it is not sufficient.

Imago: Developmental Templates and Conscious Dialogue

Imago therapy has contributed a clear and compelling framework for understanding how early attachment experiences shape partner selection, projection, and conflict. The emphasis on dialogue, mirroring, and intentional communication has helped many couples slow down and listen differently.

PACT shares Imago’s developmental foundation. Attachment templates matter. Projection is real.

Where PACT diverges is in how it treats dialogue.

Dialogue is a tool — not a guarantee. Under conditions of high arousal, threat, or fatigue, the capacity to mirror, validate, or empathize collapses. 

PACT therefore treats dialogue as something that must be supported by regulation, posture, proximity, gaze, and timing.

Secure functioning cannot depend on skills that disappear under stress.

It’s worth noting that I was invited to give a keynote at the Imago conference. Following that event, a spin-off group called IMPACT formed and focused on integrating psychobiological principles with Imago-based work. That development reflects something important: The field is converging around the same destination, even if it started from different maps.

IFS: Parts, Protection, and Internal Conflict

Internal Family Systems (IFS) has offered clinicians a humane and sophisticated way to understand internal multiplicity. The concepts of protectors, exiles, and internal polarization have helped de-pathologize behavior and deepen self-awareness.

PACT is highly compatible with IFS — up to a point.

Where PACT extends the IFS frame is by insisting that intimate relationships are not just interactions between internal systems, but two nervous systems continuously regulating or dysregulating each other.

From a secure-functioning perspective, insight into parts is useful only insofar as it leads to reliable behavior. Understanding why a protector shows up does not absolve that protector from its impact on the relationship.

PACT shifts the question from Which part is active? to What must this partner do right now to maintain safety and fairness in the system?

Self-awareness is necessary. It is not sufficient.

Relational Life Therapy: Accountability and Power

Relational Life Therapy (RLT) has made a critical contribution by reintroducing accountability, power dynamics, and ethical responsibility into couple therapy. The insistence that mutuality requires maturity aligns strongly with PACT principles.

PACT agrees that many relationships fail not because of misunderstanding but because of unilateralism, entitlement, and lack of follow-through.

Where PACT adds is by grounding accountability in psychobiology. Power struggles are not only ideological or moral; they are often driven by asymmetries in arousal tolerance, threat sensitivity, and executive capacity.

PACT trains therapists to distinguish between:

Can’t comply (due to dysregulation) 

and

Won’t comply (due to acting out or bad faith)

Secure functioning depends on knowing the difference — and responding accordingly.

PACT as an Organizing Framework

PACT is best understood as an integrative framework organized around a clear aim: secure functioning.

Secure functioning means that partners:

• Operate as a two-person system
• Share power and authority
• Protect each other under stress
• Repair quickly and effectively
• Act in the relationship’s interest even when it’s difficult

Psychobiology serves this aim. Attachment theory informs it. Neuroscience explains its vulnerabilities. But secure functioning is the standard by which everything else is evaluated.

PACT is not interested in changing partners into better people. It is interested in helping couples design relationships that work despite human limitations.

For Therapists Trained Elsewhere

If you are trained in Gottman, EFT, Imago, IFS, or RLT, you are not starting over.

You are adding:

• A clear performance standard for secure functioning
• Greater precision in reading arousal
• Stronger leverage in high-conflict moments
• A two-person model of responsibility
• A framework for acting when insight fails

PACT does not replace what you know. It organizes it around what matters most.

Different doors.
Same aim.
Secure functioning — especially when it’s hardest to achieve.

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