The Therapy Beat

As the writers in this issue powerfully demonstrate, medical science has made extended dying and its impact on relatives and loved ones—what psychologist... Read more

We’re living longer and longer, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’d choose to live through a painful terminal illnesses. Do we have the right to... Read more

A perverse set of financial incentives within the medical system too often leads to the promotion of maximum treatment, no matter what. When this happens... Read more

Both doing psychotherapy and the writing of fiction are about stories. The essence of the art of both pursuits is the openness to the possibility that, no... Read more

The Networker has always been a community affair. From our first issue, every glimmer of an idea for an article or theme of this magazine has been a group... Read more

Therapists usually enter the field because they’re drawn to it and have innate capacities to do the work. But whether they excel depends largely on their... Read more

We all have stories about the bureaucracies that stifle clinical creativity and seem to exist primarily to generate meaningless paperwork. Here’s a tale... Read more

A close-up look at a 20-year, multinational study that captures the heart of therapists’ aspirations—and perhaps the soul of our professional identity. Read more

Down for the count, a therapist again discovers that even the most hopeless sessions can have a positive outcome if you stay with the process. Read more

A modest proposal about how to get out of your cubbyhole, enliven your conversations with others in the field, and experience a new kind of professional... Read more

This issue is noteworthy not only for its subject—tracking the influence of attachment research on psychotherapy theory and practice—but also because it... Read more

While therapists may consider some intuitively appealing ideas about human development---like attachment theory---beyond dispute, the researcher's job is to... Read more

Fifty years of research has confirmed that the emotional quality of our earliest attachment relationships is central to our well-being as adults. Read more

A determined patient searches for therapeutic insight from an unlikely source. Read more

The old maxim "You should eat to live, not live to eat" may sound wise, but it's based on a profound misreading of the fundamental facts of human biology. Read more

Despite the common cultural notion that anyone can successfully lose weight---constantly reinforced by the $60 billion-a-year diet industry---at least 95... Read more

Remember as a kid being scrupulously taught that eating was a serious business that brooked no nonsense? A lifetime later, this author discovered that---as... Read more

From the viewpoint of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, the reason that dieters so frequently fail to stick to their healthy eating plans is simple: knowing what... Read more

The key to working effectively with eating disorders is understanding that starving, bingeing, and purging aren't simply bad habits. For treatment to work, it... Read more

MIT professor Sherry Turkle has spent the last 30 years studying what our machines have come to mean to us, and how they're altering—sometimes... Read more

Shame is the least understood dimension of men's inner experience—by both men themselves and the people who live with them. This lack of understanding may be... Read more

This issue examines whether our increasing knowledge of all those multisyllabic brain processes has really made us more effective practitioners. Read more

In the 1970s, the rise of Prozac, the DSM-III, and "evidence-based" therapies brought the appearance of coherence and order to mental health professions under... Read more

A tipping point has been reached in the impact that psychotherapy research results, no matter of interest only among a small circle of academic, are going to... Read more

As we learn more about the brain, it becomes apparent that therapists need to pay at least as much attention to the body and nervous system (both their own and... Read more

For the firs time, we're beginning to understand how to directly delete emotional meanings attributed to disturbing past events. Read more

As unlikely as it may sound, the mathematics of complexity theory could offer us the key to the elusive secrets of mental health and personal well-being. Read more

Our collective survival depends on a shift in our most basic assumptions and perceptions, one that'll drive changes in commerce and industry, as well as in our... Read more

More than a time-consuming diversion, Facebook can play a central role in marketing your practice. Read more

When TV finally came, in the early '50s, the world it brought into our living rooms was black and white, and dumbed way down. Newsmen now had faces, and, as... Read more