MARRIAGE CLINIC CL

by Gottman, John M.

• ISBN13: 9780393702828
• ISBN10: 0393702820
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-08-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

The Marriage Clinic presents a complete marital therapy program based on John Gottman's much heralded research on marital success and failure. Here one will find not only a wide range of succinct and useful assessment procedures, but also a highly specific, research-based, and modularized treatment program. In addition, there are dozens of questionnaires and interview protocols to be used in both assessment and intervention.In prospective, long-term research with over 700 couples, Gottman has discovered certain factors that distinguish happy, stable couples from both unstable, ultimately divorcing couples and stable but unhappy couples. These findings, which are explained here in understandable, nontechnical language, form the basis of his Sound Marital House theory of marriage, which guides the new therapy. This therapy has two goals: changing the marital friendship and teaching couples to regulate conflict.Despite the high aims of much marital therapy, Gottman found that most marital conflicts involve fundamentally unresolvable relationship issues called "perpetual problems." He shows how therapists can help spouses move from gridlock to dialogue on these issues. Solvable problems can be resolved more easily when the couple has a strong marital friendship. He gives therapists the tools to teach spouses five fundamental skills to develop and strengthen their friendship: softened start-up, accepting influence, repair and de-escalation, compromise, and physiological soothing.Gottman compares his clinic to a restaurant, where clients are offered a menu of treatment formats, from psychoeducation for specific issues to extended therapy to repair a badly damaged marital friendship. Therapists, too, can choose among the questionnaires and strategies for those that fit the needs of particular couples. Whatever their choice, they will find that their practice is greatly enriched by the scientifically-based offerings of The Marriage Clinic.

Table of Contents

Part I RESEARCH AND THEORY	1	(110)
Myths and Mistakes of Marital Therapy	3	(28)
Marital Therapy Effects: Little or Nothing with High Relapse	4	(2)
Giving Science a Chance	6	(2)
Dispelling Myths and Mistakes in Marital Therapy	8	(15)
Dispelling Myths About What Predicts Divorce	23	(3)
``Home Away From Home'': Creating a Marital Laboratory	26	(5)
Repair and the Core Triad of Balance	31	(56)
Balance in Marriage	31	(6)
The Core Triad of Balance: Interactive Behavior	37	(31)
The Core Triad of Balance: Perception	68	(6)
The Core Triad of Balance: Physiology	74	(11)
Summary	85	(2)
The Sound Marital House: A Theory of Marriage	87	(24)
Three Types of Stable, Happy Couples	88	(8)
Perpetual Problems in Stable Marriages	96	(9)
The Sound Marital House	105	(6)
Part II ASSESSMENT	111	(66)
The Assessment of Marriage	113	(48)
What I Want to Know When a Couple Comes in for Treatment	114	(5)
Addressing the Seven Questions	119	(9)
The Assessment of Physical Health	128	(1)
When Is Marital Therapy Contraindicated?	128	(1)
Case Example of Assessment Concepts: Murphy and Rose	129	(4)
The Case of George and Emma	133	(28)
The Disasters and Masters of Marriage	161	(16)
Love Maps	161	(1)
Fondness and Admiration System	162	(1)
Turning Toward Versus Turning Away	163	(1)
Sentiment Override	164	(1)
The Regulation of Conflict: Perpetual Problems	165	(3)
The Regulation of Conflict: Solvable Problems	168	(2)
Honoring Dreams	170	(3)
Creating Shared Meaning	173	(4)
Part III INTERVENTION	177	(155)
Assumptions and Intervention Overview	179	(22)
My Assumptions	179	(6)
The Modular Approach to Intervention	185	(9)
Intervention Overview	194	(1)
Menu Model of the Gottman Marriage Clinic	195	(4)
Specific Interventions, Therapeutic Moments, and Marital Walnuts	199	(2)
Enhancing the Marital Friendship	201	(17)
The Failed Bid	201	(1)
Goal: Couple Will Be Able to Process Their Own Interaction and Make It Better	202	(1)
The Interventions and Their Design	202	(16)
Solving What Is Solvable	218	(16)
Setting Up the Conflict Discussions	218	(2)
Resolving Problems That Can Be Resolved: The Five Skills	220	(14)
Living with the Inevitable	234	(26)
Establishing a Dialogue with Perpetual Problems	234	(18)
Dreams Within Conflict Case	252	(8)
Life Dreams and Shared Meanings	260	(6)
Case Example	263	(3)
Resistance to Change	266	(15)
Internal Working Models and the Sound Marital House	266	(13)
Other Sources of Resistance	279	(2)
Avoiding Relapse	281	(11)
The Failed Marital Argument	281	(7)
Build in Rituals of Emotional Connection	288	(4)
Pulling It All Together: Working as a Team and Terminating Therapy	292	(15)
Pulling It All Together	293	(2)
The Marital Poop Detector: Resetting the Negativity Threshold	295	(5)
More Intense and Rapid Early Treatment Combined with Fading	300	(4)
The Magic Five Hours a Week	304	(1)
When to Terminate Therapy: Unsuccessful Cases	304	(2)
In All Cases Expect Relapse: Follow-up Sessions	306	(1)
Emotion and Meta-emotion	307	(15)
A Case of Meta-emotion Mismatch	309	(6)
Other Sources of Mismatches: Emotion Metaphors	315	(7)
Buffering Children from Marital Conflict	322	(10)
Emotion-Dismissing vs. Emotion-Coaching Parents	322	(3)
The Contribution of Haim Ginott	325	(4)
Training Parents to Be Emotion-Coaching	329	(3)
Afterword	332	(3)
Appendices	335	(88)
References	423	(20)
Index	443