John Gottman (therapist)

• Education: Fairleigh Dickinson University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin

Significance: John Gottman is a clinical psychologist best known for his research on relationships. Since the 1970s, he has been studying the way couples interact during conflict and has used this research to determine marital stability and predict divorce. He and his wife, Julie Schwartz Gottman, cofounded the Gottman Institute.

Background

John Gottman was born on April 26, 1942, in the Dominican Republic. His father was an Orthodox rabbi, and his parents moved to the United States when Gottman was a child. He was raised in a Jewish household in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. After graduating from high school, he attended Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, where he received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1962.

Gottman continued his education in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he eventually developed an interest in psychology. He received a master’s degree in mathematics from MIT in 1964. He then taught math and worked as a computer programmer at the Lawrence Radiation Lab in Berkeley, California, for a short time. Gottman planned to pursue a doctorate in math at MIT, but he was intrigued by psychology. His interest led him to study relationships. He learned how they could be scientifically measured, which appealed to him because of his math background. He decided to leave MIT and study psychology.

Gottman chose to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. He selected the university because he was interested in the work of psychologist Harry Harlow, who was working on a study regarding monkeys and separation anxiety. He was also drawn to the statistics department, which offered study in a mathematics field called time series analysis, which Gottman later used in his research on relationships. He received an M.A. in clinical psychology-mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1967 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1971, and then earned a teaching job at Indiana University.

Life’s Work

At Indiana University during the 1970s, Gottman met psychologist Robert Levenson. The two began work on a series of relationship studies that would come to define Gottman’s career. They studied a large array of couples from straight and same-sex couples, married and unmarried couples, old and young couples, and rural and urban couples. They videotaped the couples during a conflict and measured physical factors, including heart rate, skin conductance, gross motor activity, and blood velocity, and behavior patterns of the couples. They then interviewed the couples and followed up with them a few years later.

By 1983, Gottman and Levenson determined patterns that they identified as “masters” or “disasters” of relationships. This research allowed them to predict whether a couple would divorce. By this time, Gottman was teaching at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois, where he continued his research. By 1986, Gottman was married and divorced twice. Even though he spent much of his time researching relationships, he struggled to maintain one of his own.

In 1986, Gottman moved to Seattle, Washington, where he worked as a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. In May, he decided to conduct a personal experiment on himself. Using a scientific approach to his love life, Gottman answered a slew of personal ads and went on sixty dates in about a month. He met a woman named Julie Schwartz on his sixty-first date. She was also a clinical psychologist. They immediately hit it off and fell in love. The man who had spent much of his career researching relationships made an emotional decision rather than a calculated, intellectual one. The two married a short time later in 1987.

Gottman continued his relationship studies with a team of researchers at the University of Washington. They developed a “love lab,” where they videotaped couples talking about a contentious topic and later measured how the couple fought over the topic. They looked for criticism, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal, and physical characteristics such as lip curling. Based on the behavior in the tapes, the researchers were able to determine which couples divorced with about 94 percent accuracy. They then contacted the couples about three to six years later to see if they were still married. The researchers also determined a link between marital satisfaction and physiological data.

In 1996, Gottman and his wife, Julie Schwartz Gottman, cofounded the Gottman Institute in Seattle, Washington, where they continued the research begun by Gottman. They hosted couples’ seminars, at which the Gottmans put themselves and their relationship on display to show that no relationship was perfect and without conflict. They counseled couples and helped them learn how to continue to love each other as they grew and changed. They also added new areas of focus to their research. They studied how children influenced a relationship and how substance abuse, domestic violence, infidelity, and past traumatic experiences affected relationships. Gottman became Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington in 2002. He continued to teach, work with the Gottman Institute, treat patients, perform research, and publish his findings into the 2020s. In 2021, Gottman received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. John and Julie Schwartz Gottman also received the Psychotherapy Networker Lifetime Achievement Award the same year.

In 2024, John and Julie Schwartz Gottman published Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection and an updated edition of The New Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy, extending their research-based approach to relationship education and therapy.

Impact

Gottman has made significant contributions to the study of relationships. Instead of using algorithms to determine mate selection, he decided to study relationships based on direct observation techniques to predict whether a couple would divorce. He uses the way couples interact during a conflict to determine compatibility and stability. Gottman is revered for his work and has published his findings in more than two hundred articles and forty books. His work has been featured in numerous newspapers, journals, and magazines, and on television shows.

Personal Life

By the 1980s, Gottman had been married and divorced twice. He married his third wife, Julie Schwartz, in 1987. The Gottmans work together at the Gottman Institute.

Bibliography

Abraham, Laurie. “Can You Really Predict the Success of a Marriage in 15 Minutes?” Slate, 8 Mar. 2010, www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/03/can_you_really_predict_the_success_of_a_marriage_in_15_minutes.html. Accessed 30 May 2026.

“Do You Want to Raise a Mensch Psychology Researcher Tells How.” Jewish News of Northern California, 30 May 1997, www.jweekly.com/1997/05/30/do-you-want-to-raise-a-mensch-psychology-researcher-tells-how. Accessed 30 May 2026.

“Drs. John and Julie Gottman Receive the Psychotherapy Networker Lifetime Achievement Award and Look to the Future with Gottman Connect.” PR Newswire, 24 Mar. 2021, www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/drs-john-and-julie-gottman-receive-the-psychotherapy-networker-lifetime-achievement-award-and-look-to-the-future-with-gottman-connect-301254543.html. Accessed 30 May 2026.

Ginsberg, Maggie. “Love Is Not a Mystery.” OnWisconsin, 2016, onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/features/love-is-not-a-mystery. Accessed 30 May 2026.

Gottman, John M., and Julie Schwartz Gottman. Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection. Harmony Books, 2024.

Gottman, John M., and Julie Schwartz Gottman. The New Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy. Updated ed., W. W. Norton, 2024.

“Honorary Degree Recipients.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2024, secfac.wisc.edu/awards/honorary-degrees/recipients/. Accessed 30 May 2026.

“John & Julie Gottman.” Gottman Institute, www.gottman.com/about/john-julie-gottman. Accessed 30 May 2026.

“The Mathematics of Love.” Edge, 13 Apr. 2004, www.edge.org/conversation/the-mathematics-of-love. Accessed 30 May 2026.