I’ve just
watched an hour-long video promotional by John Gottman, marriage researcher
and statistician. It had always been an axiom, in my view, that Gottman’s approach
is stunningly shallow and impotent. It traffics solely in generic concepts and
dynamics – limerence, love, criticism, “regrettable incident,” contempt, trust,
loyalty – without ever, ever, ever
getting to their psychological and intrapsychic meaning and the “why?” behind
them. Why a spouse is distrusting or shut down (“stonewalling”), why he has a
critical or power-and-control nature, why they can’t communicate – that is, hear and understand each other, why he
“loves” his wife but sext-messages other women, what unresolved problems (from
childhood!) he harbors and projects onto the marriage – none of this seems to
matter or possibly even to exist to Gottman, only that something adverse happens and that the
couple needs to be motivated and taught to change. The video was more of the
same, breaded with name-droppings and requests to read other books. Most
painful was listening to the question-and-answer session. God! I was transported
back to all the potboiler CEU workshops where attendees, drained of joie de vivre after six hours of anecdotes and technique retreads, ask wan questions to
try to pick something practicable out of the speaker. The presenters’ answers were uneventful. A therapist wanted to know why the couple improved in her office but invariably returned to their misery at home. Gottman and his eternally lovely and sexy wife (he lets us know this) Julie had only Dear Abby-type
advice and truisms to offer.
I assume that if Gottman were to glance at a decently depth-oriented marital psychology book like Harville Hendrix’s Getting the Love You Want, his eyes would glaze over and drift off to that bunny out the window. “‘Unconscious partnership’?” he’d murmur. “What could that mean. . . ?”
I assume that if Gottman were to glance at a decently depth-oriented marital psychology book like Harville Hendrix’s Getting the Love You Want, his eyes would glaze over and drift off to that bunny out the window. “‘Unconscious partnership’?” he’d murmur. “What could that mean. . . ?”
I need to ask:
“John – do you know how fucking complicated
a person is?”
Yes, there is indeed an abundance of chaff (and not nearly enough time!) to sift through! And the gate is indeed, narrow. I read somewhere that adulthood is that time spent recovering from one's childhood. At first it amazed me that change and recovery (re-parenting) took so long - decades in fact, but now I see (from people's comments) that it's quite common to come to some clarity after spending decades "in the dark." It literally takes decades to recover (at least through self-discovery, it might be quicker with a therapist - or that could be a false dawn also). The subtlety and complexity of the internal universe matches that of the external universe. What a trip!!
ReplyDeletePaul -- I think everyone out there but you is an appeaser, an ostrich head or a sandman. Maybe the entire world of therapists and lay people agrees with me in silence?
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