Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The Relationship Cure by Dr. John Gottman--A Critique

Dr. John Gottman’s research on successful marriages at his laboratory at the University of Washington blazed new trials in the realm of psychology. With the publication of his seminal work The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Gottman literally wrote the book on how to save failing marriages. Every relationship book written since that pivotal text has been heavily influenced by Gottman’s research.

It has been my experience that authors who discover successful psychological techniques tend to spin out a succession of books which are essentially clones of their original work. However, Gottman continues to blaze new trails in his research, and in each new text he offers his latest findings for our enrichment. In The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family and Friendships, Gottman offers a simple plan for improving our communication skills in our various relationships. Though simple in theory, each step could take a lifetime to master.

The five steps include:
-Recognizing and responding appropriately to Bids for Connection
-Recognizing human Command Systems and how they influence behavior
-Looking into your past for the origins of your behaviors
-Correctly identifying emotions in others
-Finding a shared meaning in life

In the first step, Gottman introduces the concept of “Bids for Connection.” The author admits that these petty, minor bids for attention seemed unimportant to him early in his research. However, he found, over time, that a major key to recognizing a healthy relationship was to be found in the manner in which couples offered and responded to these bids. Gottman explains how to recognize these bids in both self and others, whether they are offered in a negative or a positive fashion, and provides the reader with insight into how to respond appropriately. To my mind, this insight alone was worth the price of the book.

The second step seemed equally astounding to me. Gottman identifies the systems within our physiology, and explains how these have a profound impact on human psychology. A healthy human being responds to each of these human needs without letting it take over their life. However, individual life experience can make a person favor a particular Command System, and become exaggerated in their dependence upon it. Our own unique blend of responses to our Command Systems will determine major aspects of our personality. Recognizing these needs in others can help us to relate with their needs better, and so improve our relationship with even the most extremely distorted personality.

The third step seemed to me, at first, to be a rehashing of a classic psychological concept, since Freud, over a century ago, introduced the idea that our past relationship with our parents influences our present behavior. However, Gottman gives even this familiar ground a unique spin. He has classified the way that parents create a culture in a family which influences how the expression of emotions is treated. His brief sketches of these different cultures create recognizable pictures. We have all encountered these responses in our dealings with our fellow human beings. Gottman then goes further to share his research findings that indicate that one of these cultural responses to emotion produces a healthier more successful child. The author then offers basic guidelines to achieve this healthier culture in your own family.

The fourth step involves learning about emotional expressions, how to recognize them in their various manifestations. This section is full of exercises to improve your skills in this area. Gottman offers his own life experiences as illustrations of key principles, as well as the findings of various psychologists, so that the reader obtains a broad scope of understanding about how emotions are communicated.

The fifth step covers familiar ground for those who have read Gottman’s Seven Principles. Uncovering the dreams and ideals that guide us, and learning to share these, will help deepen any relationship. In addition, the establishment of relationship rituals and traditions helps to ground these dreams in our daily lives. The author again offers exercises that will bring out our latent dreams, and help us to identify other people’s dreams as well. He also offers scenarios that reveal how hidden ideals are often expressed through conflicts. Getting to the basis of these conflicts can help us to move beyond them to more meaningful interactions.
If there is a weakness in this book, it is that the author covers an enormous amount of ground in just a few hundred pages. Each section could easily have been expanded into an entire book. A less knowledgeable writer probably would have done so, but Gottman has a lot of insight to unfold and he doesn’t waste words while explaining the key communication techniques.

I highly recommended this book to anyone seeking to improve their relationships. And, frankly, who isn’t?