Editor's Note
May/June 2016
At this year's Symposium, we invited veteran therapists to tell their true stories of their “most unforgettable session,” and those stories are the focus of this issue. Each takes you deep inside an experience with a client that turned that therapist inside out, jolting them out of their comfortable expectations into an interaction that allowed something extraordinary to take place. Prepare yourself for some unusually honest and probing explorations into both the pitfalls and rewards of practicing the therapist’s craft, including the occasional impossibility of distinguishing between the two.
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From Attachment to Creativity
Highlights from the 2016 Symposium
May/June 2016
At a time in which our society seems immersed in a toxic stew of fear and anger, this year's Symposium provided a celebration of human values and ideas that seem to be vanishing from our public discourse. Here's a taste of a few of its particularly stellar moments.
- "Our Trichotillomania of the Soul" by Rich Simon
- "The Path of Surprise and Discovery" by David Whyte
- "The View from Black America" by Kenneth Hardy
- "The Dance of Sex" by Susan Johnson
- "The Wisdom of Mad Men" by William Doherty
- "How Hard Times Can Open the Heart" by Rick Hanson
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May/June 2016
Unexpected Gifts
Six Master Therapists Recall Their Most Unforgettable Sessions
Magazine Issue
What's Your Most Memorable Therapeutic Moment?
Six Master Clinicians Share Their Reflections
May/June 2016
Of all the meaningful sessions that take place in a therapists's career, what makes certain ones stand out? We asked six widely respected clinicians to tell the story of a particular experience that lives on for them. This special feature collects those tales of taking creative leaps in the dark and stumbling toward insight.
- "Crossing to Safety" by Courtney Armstrong
- "Happy New Year?" by Ron Taffel
- "Keeping the Faith" by Mary Jo Barrett
- "In the Valley of the Shadow" by Margie Nichols
- "The Uninvited Guest" by Hedy Schleifer
- "The Found and the Lost" by Terry Real
Magazine Article
Bookmarks
Examining the Science of Torture: The Price of Coercive Interrogation
March/April 2016
Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation. A startling new book exposes how much more the military’s embrace of enhanced interrogation tactics in the war on terror was influenced by Hollywood, rather than scientific evidence.
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Case Study
Supporting the Overwhelmed Child: Sometimes It Just Takes Time
March/April 2016
A school counselor’s patient work with a sad, uncommunicative young boy demonstrates what a difference just being there can make. * Commentary by Janet Sasson Edgette
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Clinician's Digest
The Aftermath of the Paris Attacks
March/April 2016
Therapists reflect on the terror attack in Paris.
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Editor's Note
March/April 2016
I found talking to the transgender kids and their parents that I interviewed for this issue not only enlightening and educational, which I expected, but also viscerally moving. I was bowled over by the stubborn integrity of young kids who would insist upon being who they feel themselves to be, regardless of what anybody thought. Where, I wondered, did they find that spirit, that audacity, that sheer heroism, and at that age? But, then, talking to the parents of these kids, I began to understand a bit better.
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Family Matters
The Bonds that Sustain Us: A Family Weathers a Time of Uncertainty
March/April 2016
What parent doesn’t know the ache of helplessness that comes when you can’t do anything for your child but feel entirely responsible anyway?
Magazine Article
In Consultation
Detoxifying Criticism: How to Help Clients Gain Perspective
March/April 2016
An innovative way of working with people who are hypersensitive to criticism.
Magazine Article
It Takes A Tribe
What It's Like to Raise (or Be) a Transgender Child
March/April 2016
Until very recently, most families with transgender children had never met another family like theirs. Now parents and children from the trailblazing Ackerman Institute’s Family & Gender Project talk about their experience of joining a healing community that offers acceptance and a validating mirror of their own experience.
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Point of View
New Technologies for Today’s Practitioners: Using Virtual Reality to treat PTSD
March/April 2016
The increasingly accessible and inexpensive technology of virtual reality now enables us to incorporate digital Skinner boxes in our practices that can enhance healing for trauma survivors.
Magazine Article
The Great Escape
Welcome to the World of Gender Fluidity
March/April 2016
As cultural attitudes about gender variance have undergone a profound shift, much of what therapists believed about what it means to be transgender is now hopelessly outdated. But how do people know that they’re the wrong gender? And what does that kind of knowing mean for our assumptions about males and females as “opposite sexes”?
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The Transgender Journey
What Role Should Therapists Play?
March/April 2016
Parents typically view their children in the largely gendered terms society lays out for them. Rearranging that internal mind map requires tremendous effort and adjustment. Given the alarming suicide rates for transgender children, it can also be a matter of life and death.
Magazine Article
When Seismic Change Becomes the Norm
The Therapist in the Real World
March/April 2016
There was a time, not long ago, when all therapists needed to begin practicing their craft was a quiet room, an appointment book, a phone, and an answering machine. Since then, our field has gone through some truly seismic shifts.
Magazine Article
In Consultation
Understanding What Your Audience Needs
January/February 2016
Some tips on the do’s and don’ts of giving a good workshop.
Magazine Article
Bookmarks
Who’s the Grown-Up Here?: Helping parents abandon the “buddy” system
January/February 2016
In The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups, family physician and psychologist Leonard Sax insists that too many parents these days misunderstand the role they should play in their children’s lives.
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Case Study
The Remarriage Triangle: Working with Later-Life Recouplers and their Grown Children
January/February 2016
Therapists need to be prepared to go against the conventional clinical wisdom in helping later-life recouplers and stepfamilies handle the unique challenges they face.
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Editor’s Note
January/February 2016
I suspect that no matter how sophisticated we become about sex in the abstract, there’s some half-hidden, unacknowledged suspicion within most of us that sex—or at least the way we personally experience and think about it—is peculiar, if not downright bizarre.
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Family Matters
The Last Dance: Awakening a Mother’s Joyful Spirit
January/February 2016
Toward the end of her life, a woman turns back the clock by performing the goofy ballet of her youth.
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Inside Hookup Culture
Are We Having Fun Yet?
January/February 2016
On college campuses across the country, hooking up has all but replaced traditional, old-school dating rituals. With its rawness and frantic incoherence, we’ll be seeing the emotional legacy of this way of learning about love and commitment for many years to come.
Magazine Article
Point of View
Losing Our War on Stress: It’s time to reconsider our approach
January/February 2016
Psychologist Kelly McGonigal believes that stress isn’t the public health menace it’s usually made out to be—our compulsion to avoid it is often the bigger problem.
Magazine Article
The Case for Porn
January/February 2016
Porn is polarizing. Porn is confusing. Porn can be alarming. For therapists, porn can push us out of our comfort zone and trigger negative countertransference. But one thing is for sure: porn is everywhere, and it’s here to stay. But this doesn’t mean that we’re being overwhelmed by an epidemic of “porn addiction,” as some people suggest. Porn can play a big role in achieving “rec-relational” lovemaking, and it doesn’t have to take away from a secure attachment.
Magazine Article
The Dance of Sex
January/February 2016
If you’re going to help a couple get closer and really learn to work harmoniously with one another, whether in bed or anywhere else, the key is helping partners experience bonding moments that open them to becoming emotionally accessible to each other. If you can do that, their bodies will follow, and sex will almost always improve.
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