My Favorite Psychological Theorist

I realize it might sound strange to some to be talking about my favorite psychological theorist but I think that the work of John Gottman is very interesting.  Over the last three decades John Gottman and  his wife Julie Swartz-Gottman have created, with the help of their “Love Lab” studies, an effective method of treating couples in distress.  This method is centered in the here and now, is emotion focused, and experiential in nature.  What follows is a brief description of the Gottman method of couple therapy.

First let me add some interesting facts… Gottman defines a well–functioning couple as those partners that remain relatively stable and happy over time.  The couple is able to maintain control during negative conflict, create shared meaning in the relationship, and increase positive influence.  They were able to have a 5:1 positive to negative interaction ratio, which Gottman found was important to maintaining an effective, stable relationship.  A dysfunctional couple is partners that either stayed in unhappy relationships together or broke up.  The couple is unable to maintain control during negative conflict, create shared meaning within the relationship, or to increase positive influence.  This type of couple had a lower positive to negative interaction ratio of .8:1 (Gottman, 1999, p. 35).

Gottman's work is based on the Sound Marital House Theory (Gottman, 1999, p. 105).  There are seven levels to this theory arranged in hierarchical order.  1.  Create love maps.  Love maps are a road map of one's partner's inner world.  These maps are built by asking the partner open ended questions.  2.  Make the admiration and fondness system by articulating respect and love in everyday small moments.  3.  Turn toward instead of against or away from their spouse’s requests for affective connection.  4.  Permit positive sentiment override, meaning not taking negative or neutral partner events personally.  5.  Take a multi–pronged approach toward managing disagreements by using a gentle method in stating complaints, receiving influence, compromise, physical soothing, and by creating communication with continuous problems that explores each individual’s life dreams within conflict.   6.  Honor each other's life dreams.  7.  Construct a shared meaning system by creating informal and formal rituals of connection, building shared values and goals, common views of symbols and supporting each other's life roles.  The Sound Marital House Theory provides an overall structure for Gottman's assessments, therapy, and key interventions and techniques.

There are five goals the Gottman method.  I will briefly go over the five goals however I will not discuss the different steps involved with each goal.  For further information, I would recommend reading the chapter on the Gottman method of couple therapy in S. Gurman's Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy (4^th ed., 2008).  The first goal in the Gottman method is to down-regulate negative affect during conflict.  Although conflict is inevitable, it is important to be able to achieve repair after the fight which means being able to process the fight by talking about it without getting back into the fight.  This also means being able to reduce what Gottman calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse, his greatest predictors of divorce.  This involves increasing the partners’ knowledge of the occurrence of the horsemen and teaching them how to use the appropriate antidotes.  The four horsemen are as follows: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.  The antidotes for these are: complaining, accepting responsibility for at least part of the problem, respect within the relationship, and self-soothing.

Goal two in the Gottman method is to up-regulate positive affect during conflict.  This occurs by having couples turn toward each other when bids for affection are made couples can also build friendship in their relationship by increasing the activation of the positive affect system in non-conflict periods.  This could potentially lead to an increase in positive affect during conflict.  Goal three of the Gottman method is to build positive affect during non-conflict.  This can be partially accomplished by teaching clients to savor positive affect.  Goal four of the Gottman method is to bridge meta-emotion mismatches.  Meta-emotion is the way people feel about having emotions.  There are two broad types.  Those people who are emotion dismissing have poorly developed dictionaries of different emotions and did not care or know what they were feeling not having needs as a strength.  Those people who are emotion coaching see emotions as a guide on how to proceed through life.  They validate others emotions.  A meta-emotion mismatch predicts the pattern of turning away from bids such as the "pursuer-distancer" pattern.  Goal five is to create and nurture a shared meaning system.  This is something that all couples unintentionally or intentionally build, so it is important for the counselor to assist them in creating a positive shared meaning system.

This provides a brief example of Gottman’s goals in therapy.  He has published numerous books filled with assessments, references to the many tools he uses in his therapy sessions, and he offers seminars on how to use his methods in therapy.  He continues to do research as well. 

References

Gottman, J. M. (1999). The marriage clinic: A scientifically based marital therapy. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Gottman, J. M., & Gottman, J. S. (2008). Gottman method couple therapy. In S. Gurman (Ed.).   Clinical handbook of couple therapy (4^th ed.). New York: Guilford Press.