From the Editor

 

From the Editor

If you're a hopeless Old Media addict like me, there's nothing like the first sight of your favorite glossy right after it arrives fresh from your mailbox, followed by the pleasure of slowly settling into the glow of your accustomed magazine trance. But given the culture's growing appetite for faster-paced sources of information and entertainment, old-fashioned purveyors of print like the Networker can be forgiven for occasionally feeling like we're etching ancient cuneiform on clay tablets while the world has moved on to more frenetic forms of communication.

Let's face it, reading a magazine may be one of life's great pleasures, but, like all good things, it has its limits. So with this issue, we're launching Networker Plugged-In to make each issue of this magazine a springboard for further exploration, learning, and connection. From now on, the joys of reading well-written, thoughtful pieces about important subjects in the field will be just the beginning of what we have to offer you. Each new Networker will be followed up with a series of webcasts called "Networker Live!"—a regular program of live, freewheeling video interviews related to the topics of the issue, broadcast directly into your home or office.

This issue examines whether our increasing knowledge of all those multisyllabic brain processes has really made us more effective practitioners. We've assembled a collection of provocative, perhaps game-changing articles, which discuss whether we're on the brink of a new era of clinical practice or have merely added some more impressively scientific-sounding lingo to our standard professional jargon.

The "Networker Live!" rollout for this issue will premiere on January 20 with an interview with Daniel Siegel, widely acknowledged as the pioneer in integrating brain science and psychotherapy. Guests in future weeks will include Daniel Goleman, Jerome Kagan, and Ron Taffel, offering you not only a front-row seat on the conversations shaping the future of psychotherapy, but a chance to participate in them as well. If you wish, you'll also be able to receive CE credits by registering for these webcast sessions (see page 40).

Beyond that, if you're really intrigued by the clinical perspective of an author in an issue, there's a good chance that we'll be offering a Telecourse through Networker U that'll enable you to further your learning connection with him or her. From this issue, we invite you to sign up for the upcoming Telecourse with Lloyd Linford and John Arden, the authors of this issue's visionary cover story (see page 24). In addition, to help you most effectively bring new clinical ideas into your work, each issue will give you a chance to enroll in a live Case Consultation Teleseminar, exploring the immediate, nuts-and-bolts implications of whatever clinical topic has been presented in that issue. This time, the live Case Consultation will be led by Janina Fisher, the author of "Brain to Brain" (see page 34).

Of course, in the end, there's nothing quite like face-to-face contact with members of your own community. So don't forget the irreplaceable four-day tribal gathering and festival of learning and creativity that's the annual Networker Symposium—which this year has the especially timely title Breaking Through: Discovering New Possibilities in a Time of Uncertainty—to be held here in Washington, March 25–28 (see page 11). To make it even more exciting, we've designed this year's Symposium to go beyond just being a superb conference experience into a launching point for year-round learning.

With both the Symposium and Networker Plugged-In, we've made a breakthrough in making our field's enormous resources for inspiration, connection, and learning immediately accessible to you, whatever your clinical needs and interests, wherever you happen to practice. We hope you take advantage of these new opportunities for enhancing your skills, deepening your outlook, and extending your professional network to make 2010 a breakthrough year for yourself.