ABSTRACT
John Gottman began collaboration with Levenson with the idea that studying emotion and physiology might yield some understanding of internal subjective experiences that would provide more predictive power to their intervention research. Gottman's background in mathematics was prominent in the early research as he explored how to conduct time series, repeated measures, and covariant analyses. In 1987, Gottman married Julie Schwartz, a psychologist with many years of clinical experience working with challenging populations. Gottman found three preferred conflict styles that he called conflict minimizing, validating, and volatile. Criticism and defensiveness were common behaviors found during disagreements between partners and even master couples were found to fall into them. Couples in positive sentiment override had a general sense of trust and positivity in the relationship and were likely to interpret ambiguous signals with positive intent. Couples learn the Sound Relationship House model and how couples counseling will reinforce their strengths and transform their challenges.
