Dr. John Gottman has been studying couples and families for more than three decades. Through analyzing thousands of interactions, he has scientifically determined the factors that produce long-lived harmonious relationships, and those behaviors that damage and eventually ruin relationships. From this, he has put together a practical and scientific therapy method for helping and strengthening relationships between committed couples, and between parents and children.

Dr. Gottman and his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, created The Gottman Institute in Seattle, Washington, to provide training in the Gottman method to health care professionals, and indepth workshops to individual clients. I have been involved with The Gottman Institute since 2004. I have found the pragmatic Gottman program to be a break-through for relationship-based counseling, and have been pleased to make it a primary component of my own counseling approach.

Dr. Gottman has become quite well known in the popular arena through his best-selling books Why Marriages Succeed and Fail and Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, among others. In 2005, Malcolm Gladwell included an entire section on Gottman’s couples research in his best-selling book Blink. “Gottman has proven something remarkable. If he analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later.”

For more information see www.gottman.com.