Life Without Father
A Son Looks for Answers from a Stoic Parent Back from War
By Frank Pittman - Even though I knew I wanted to be a father when I grew up, I didn’t know exactly what skills were required. We of the ’40s and ’50s grew up with fathers who were off at war or at work, and who weren’t part of the family even when they were at home. We were essentially fatherless.
Daily Blog
Six Ways to Find Comedy in Even the Darkest Moments
Shaking Your Clients Loose from Their Tragic Stances
By Frank Pittman - Therapy, in order to shake people loose from their tragic stances and bounce them into the human comedy, is at its best when it is funny, when the tragic family story being acted out is rewritten to provide a happy ending. I urge therapists to keep these simple guidelines in mind as they go through their day.
Daily Blog
The Liberating Power of Honesty
What People Don't Know Can Hurt Them. What They Don't Reveal Can Hurt Even More
By Frank Pittman - When we therapists believe a secret's revelations would be dangerous, the client receives a frightening message about him- or herself and about the world. We may accept our patients and make psychodynamic, systemic or sociological excuses for them, while still conveying that their secret is unacceptable. Thus, while explicitly "supporting" them, we implicitly undermine their sense that they are fundamentally decent, acceptable people.
Daily Blog
Coping and Learning After a Client's Suicide
A Therapist Reflects on What He Might Have Done Differently
By Frank Pittman - I've been in full-time private practice for almost 30 years. In that time, three patients in my practice killed themselves. Each suicide has left me shell-shocked and questioning my therapeutic attitudes and methods. I did not expect Adam to be one of my casualties.
Daily Blog
Turns in the Road
Highlights from the Networker Journey
Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of articles that have appeared in the Networker over the past four decades, we’ve chosen a small sampling that captures the magazine’s most journalistic side, conveying not so much the eternal verities of our profession, but the sense of reading a first draft of the field’s history. Among other things, you’ll find therapeutic methods that, as exciting as they seemed at the moment, didn’t stand the test of time as well as initial forays into discussing complex issues we’re still struggling with today. We’ve also added in a few examples of writing so immediate and compelling that they have an air of timelessness. Prepare yourself for an interesting journey.
Magazine Article
Voices of Truth
By Frank Pittman - 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 eyewitnesses, we could now determine who had an honest face and who didn't. The most honest of the talking heads seemed to be the revered war correspondent Edward R. Murrow. Now the actor George Clooney has put together a reenactment of the public clash between Murrow and the rabid senator Joe McCarthy. It's called Good Night and Good Luck.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Move Over, Meryl: Kate Winslet Ascends to Center Stage
What separates screen actors who remain enshrined in our memory from those who just momentarily catch our eye?
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Inside Out: Frost/Nixon and Milk Hold a Mirror to Our Fears
Movies are about giving us outsiders in the audience the illusion of being inside the charmed circle of real experience.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Tell Me a Story: As Hollywood Goes Postmodern, Has Narrative Become Passé?
If you're like me, you've noticed that movies don't make as much sense as they used to. Nevertheless, I suspect that there's still an audience somewhere out there with an old-fashioned appetite for narrative coherence—an audience that wants a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end; a story that inspires, instructs, and offers insights into the human condition.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
More than Just Frivolity: Joel and Ethan Coen Give Us the Antidote to the Happy Ending
The Coen brothers specialize in redefining the rules of whatever movie genre they happen to be subverting.
Magazine Article
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Life Without Father
A Son Looks for Answers from a Stoic Parent Back from War
By Frank Pittman - Even though I knew I wanted to be a father when I grew up, I didn’t know exactly what skills were required. We of the ’40s and ’50s grew up with fathers who were off at war or at work, and who weren’t part of the family even when they were at home. We were essentially fatherless.
Daily Blog
Six Ways to Find Comedy in Even the Darkest Moments
Shaking Your Clients Loose from Their Tragic Stances
By Frank Pittman - Therapy, in order to shake people loose from their tragic stances and bounce them into the human comedy, is at its best when it is funny, when the tragic family story being acted out is rewritten to provide a happy ending. I urge therapists to keep these simple guidelines in mind as they go through their day.
Daily Blog
The Liberating Power of Honesty
What People Don't Know Can Hurt Them. What They Don't Reveal Can Hurt Even More
By Frank Pittman - When we therapists believe a secret's revelations would be dangerous, the client receives a frightening message about him- or herself and about the world. We may accept our patients and make psychodynamic, systemic or sociological excuses for them, while still conveying that their secret is unacceptable. Thus, while explicitly "supporting" them, we implicitly undermine their sense that they are fundamentally decent, acceptable people.
Daily Blog
Coping and Learning After a Client's Suicide
A Therapist Reflects on What He Might Have Done Differently
By Frank Pittman - I've been in full-time private practice for almost 30 years. In that time, three patients in my practice killed themselves. Each suicide has left me shell-shocked and questioning my therapeutic attitudes and methods. I did not expect Adam to be one of my casualties.
Daily Blog
Page 1 of 1 (4 Items)
Turns in the Road
Highlights from the Networker Journey
Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of articles that have appeared in the Networker over the past four decades, we’ve chosen a small sampling that captures the magazine’s most journalistic side, conveying not so much the eternal verities of our profession, but the sense of reading a first draft of the field’s history. Among other things, you’ll find therapeutic methods that, as exciting as they seemed at the moment, didn’t stand the test of time as well as initial forays into discussing complex issues we’re still struggling with today. We’ve also added in a few examples of writing so immediate and compelling that they have an air of timelessness. Prepare yourself for an interesting journey.
Magazine Article
Voices of Truth
By Frank Pittman - 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 eyewitnesses, we could now determine who had an honest face and who didn't. The most honest of the talking heads seemed to be the revered war correspondent Edward R. Murrow. Now the actor George Clooney has put together a reenactment of the public clash between Murrow and the rabid senator Joe McCarthy. It's called Good Night and Good Luck.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Move Over, Meryl: Kate Winslet Ascends to Center Stage
What separates screen actors who remain enshrined in our memory from those who just momentarily catch our eye?
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Inside Out: Frost/Nixon and Milk Hold a Mirror to Our Fears
Movies are about giving us outsiders in the audience the illusion of being inside the charmed circle of real experience.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Tell Me a Story: As Hollywood Goes Postmodern, Has Narrative Become Passé?
If you're like me, you've noticed that movies don't make as much sense as they used to. Nevertheless, I suspect that there's still an audience somewhere out there with an old-fashioned appetite for narrative coherence—an audience that wants a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end; a story that inspires, instructs, and offers insights into the human condition.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
More than Just Frivolity: Joel and Ethan Coen Give Us the Antidote to the Happy Ending
The Coen brothers specialize in redefining the rules of whatever movie genre they happen to be subverting.
Magazine Article
Blood and Guts
Violence is Central to Some of the Year's Best Films
By Frank Pittman - While lions and sharks go into frenzy at the smell of blood, at the sight of blood, moviegoers seem to experience a heightening of all emotions, sometimes recoiling from the horror, but more often anticipating the danger to follow. Violence and blood on the screen, even more than naked people coupling, grabs our attention and makes us perk up our ears and feel our own vulnerability, like rabbits sensing danger.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Darkness and Light: Evoking the Flip Sides of the Hollywood Dream Machine
Two hugely successful films, released on the same weekend this summer, revealed the flip side of the Hollywood experience.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
No Country for Old Men * Indiana Jones and the Temple of Youth
Part of the magic of Hollywood movies is that the larger-than-life heroes and heroines up there on the screen don't age and wither and deteriorate like the rest of us do. In fact, it may be that one of the reasons we go to the movies, at least in youth-obsessed America, is to bathe in a cinematic fountain of perpetual youth. If they're not getting older and flabbier, maybe we won't either.
Magazine Article
Screening Room
Hollywood and the Unwed Mother: Comedy is a Window on Our Social Mores
Some comedies about unwed motherhood reveal deeper truths about those subjects we can laugh about and those we can't.
Magazine Article
Frank Pittman, M.D., is a contributing editor to The Family Therapy Networker and is in private practice.
