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?
