From The Editor Mar/Apr

 


March/April

By Rich Simon

With the economy going off a cliff, some of us have vowed to stop reading the newspaper or surfing the news on the Internet. After all, it can't be good for our mental health to be continually hammered by word of fresh disasters. At the same time, we can't cover our ears and shut our eyes with our clients—if we still have clients—who may be spending their therapy sessions wringing their hands and moaning about the perilous state of their 401Ks. And, whatever brought them into therapy—depression, anxiety, substance abuse, marital problems—the prospect of being laid off or dropping 50 percent of their net worth can't do much for their state of mind.

The problem is that, these days, we often feel we're in the same leaky boat they are. How can we help clients surmount their own fears of drowning if we're not sure we'll make it to dry land? How do we make our own practices more financially seaworthy so we get through this storm with our professional lives intact?

In this issue, we take a look at what Meltdown America reveals about our collective psyche, and provide some practical, perhaps surprising, guidelines to therapists about their own economic survival. Believe it or not, you may be able to use the crisis not only to grow, but to radically improve your practice.

In "Easy Money," Fred Wistow takes a wry, penetrating look at the generational shifts in our thinking (and dreaming) about money over the last half-century, including the recent period of mass financial delusion that now appears to be coming to an end. He concludes that this abrupt halt to the fairy tale that many of us have been living may not be such a bad thing for our collective sanity.

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