Your guides
The people behind the course
A course about a marriage in crisis stands or falls on who is speaking. Here is who we are - where our experience comes from, and why we believe a crisis can be mapped.
Pavel Rataj
Psychologist and couples therapist
Pavel is a psychologist and couples psychotherapist who has spent more than twenty years in daily practice with couples - through crises, estrangement, affairs, and the slow work of finding a way back to each other. What his clients tend to remember is not advice, but precision: the moment someone finally names what has been happening between two people.
He is not only a practitioner. As co-founder and training lecturer of INPAT, the Institute of Couple Therapy in Prague, he teaches couple therapy to experienced psychotherapists - the institute is one of four in the Czech Republic that train couples therapists. He has taught at the Department of Psychology at Charles University in Prague and served as vice-president of the Czech Association of Marriage and Family Counsellors. His multi-year training program covers relationship dynamics, couple therapy and sex therapy, which means the people who treat couples professionally learn part of their craft from him.
He writes and lectures on couple therapy, is a frequent voice on relationships in the Czech media, and is the author and professional guarantor of Vztahy.cz, a leading Czech platform on relationships. His working belief, tested on thousands of hours with couples: the dynamic between two people decides more than the personality of either one.
- 20+ years of daily psychotherapy practice with couples
- Co-founder and training lecturer, INPAT - Institute of Couple Therapy, Prague
- Taught at the Department of Psychology, Charles University in Prague
- Former vice-president of the Czech Association of Marriage and Family Counsellors
- Leads a multi-year training in couple therapy for experienced psychotherapists
- Author and professional guarantor of Vztahy.cz
Honza Vojtko
Couples and individual therapist
Honza is a couples and individual psychotherapist with two decades of practice. His daily work is walking with people into places they have been avoiding for years - old pains, defences, the parts of themselves they were taught to hide - and staying beside them there long enough for something to change.
Alongside Pavel he teaches at INPAT, the Institute of Couple Therapy in Prague, helping to train the next generation of couples therapists, and lectures at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University. He works in close collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health of the Czech Republic. And he never stopped being a writer: his books and long-running columns on relationships have made him one of the best-known relationship voices in the country, and he is still writing today.
If you asked him for the shortest version of what he has learned, it might be this: connection is the breath of a relationship. It can be held too long - and it can be found again.
- Two decades of psychotherapy practice with couples and individuals
- Teaches couples therapists at INPAT alongside Pavel
- Lectures at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague
- Collaborates closely with the National Institute of Mental Health (Czech Republic)
- Author of books and long-running columns on relationships - still writing today
Together we founded INPAT, the Institute of Couple Therapy, and much of our work is teaching couple therapy to other therapists - including our own concept, the Cycle of Connection: the rhythm of connecting, drifting apart and finding each other again. Every day we walk with our clients into places they have avoided for years - places that hold pain, but also a real, non-naive hope. This course is our way of opening that road to people who will never sit on the couch in our therapy room.