Dreams Within Conflict
Research-Informed
Gottman's concept: beneath almost every gridlocked conflict is a deeper dream, hope, or value each person is protecting.
Gottman's concept: beneath almost every gridlocked conflict is a deeper dream, hope, or value each person is protecting. Arguments about money often aren't about money — they're about security, freedom, or identity. When couples argue only at the position level, they never reach the meaning level. Exploring the dream inside the position creates empathy and movement where positions alone create walls.
Evidence
Research-Informed
Dreams within conflict, the technique of uncovering the deeper hopes or fears beneath a gridlocked disagreement, earns Research-Informed. It is a therapeutic method within Gottman Method Couples Therapy rather than a standalone descriptive finding, so it carries the therapy's evidence standing: real peer-reviewed outcome work, but small, largely non-independent studies with no head-to-head trials against established modalities (Babcock et al., 2013). The underlying observation, that gridlock often masks unmet needs, comes from the stronger descriptive Gottman research.
Origin
John Gottman
Sources
- The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work — John Gottman, 1999