About SXCT
Structural Experiential Couple Therapy was developed by Juan Korkie through sustained work with complex, high-conflict, and treatment-resistant relationships — couples who did not respond to conventional methods. It is rooted in systemic and constructivist principles and understands relational distress not as pathology, but as a pattern of organisation. The focus is on making the structure of interaction visible so that the pattern keeping the couple stuck can shift.
SXCT works from the understanding that physiology, emotion, and behaviour are inseparable. Drawing from polyvagal theory, close attention is paid to the nervous system, levels of activation in the room, and the way regulation and safety shape what becomes possible between partners. Each conversation functions both as a map of the relationship and as the place where change begins.
The work is experiential and behavioural rather than abstract or interpretive. Attention is placed on what partners actually do, say, and enact with one another. Change starts by interrupting destructive conversational patterns, regulating intensity, and guiding partners through structured exchanges where emotional truth can emerge without collapse or escalation.
For couples, this approach feels clear, direct, and practical. For clinicians observing the work, it is organised, sequential, and grounded in theory without losing its human immediacy. The process moves from de-escalation to mapping, emotional restructuring, and the gradual reorganisation of interaction. SXCT is both an architecture of process and a therapeutic stance: directive, impartial, and unavoidably human.
About Juan Korkie
​Juan Korkie is a Clinical Psychologist with more than two decades of experience working with individuals, couples, and families across South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. He is licensed to practise in all three countries and works primarily with relational distress that has become repetitive, entrenched, or difficult to shift through insight alone.
His work draws on systemic, constructivist, and polyvagal theory, integrating these perspectives into a coherent, practice-based approach to change. He focuses on how relationships organise emotion, meaning, and interaction under pressure, and how these patterns shape what partners experience with each other over time. He has led clinical services, supervised multidisciplinary teams, and trained practitioners in approaches that prioritise structure, regulation, and relational depth.
This work developed through sustained engagement with couples for whom traditional approaches had stalled. His writing and teaching centre on making the invisible structure of relationships visible — the recurring patterns that quietly govern how partners speak, react, protect themselves, and miss each other. He is concerned with bridging clinical theory and lived relational experience, and with translating complex psychological ideas into work that is usable, grounded, and emotionally real.
