A Vehicle of Awakening: Can Psychotherapy Be a Spiritual Practice?
Molly Layton • 3/12/2022
In The Zen of Therapy, psychiatrist Mark Epstein explores what a Buddhist therapy has offered his clients.
Magazine Article
Suicide as a State of Being: One Man's Ongoing Struggle
Molly Layton • 1/5/2022
A new memoir from celebrated writer Donald Antrim reflects on the nature of suicide.
Magazine Article
In Couples Therapy, Sitting With Sensations Can Have a Surprising Effect
Molly Layton • 3/8/2018
By Molly Layton - Even with two people sitting quietly, an interpersonal space isn't an empty space—it's alive with a peculiar quality. These days, in certain intractable situations, I keep discovering how much getting couples to focus on the immediacy of their bodily sensations can change the entire flow and direction of what takes place in my office.
Daily Blog
Step One: Confronting Your Own Limitations
Molly Layton • 2/1/2018
By Molly Layton - The longer I practice, the more I'm struck with the importance of tolerant, hovering attentiveness that looks, Janus-faced, both outwardly at the client and inwardly toward the therapist's own processes.
Daily Blog
Highlights from the Networker Journey
Mary Sykes Wylie, Dusty Miller, Esther Perel, Frank Pittman, Fred Wistow, Gary Greenberg, Katy Butler, Laura Markowitz, Molly Layton, Rich Simon, Ron Taffel • 1/1/2017
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
Using Mindfulness to Explore Emotion in Couples Conflict
Molly Layton • 5/13/2015
If we can bring awareness into our own pulsing bodies, we get a chance to explore the hidden well of physical discomfort caused by our memories and emotions and our crazy defenses against that discomfort. The body, you might argue, is the unconscious. No one welcomes discomfort, but the fear of becoming overwhelmed, the fear of unleashing strange forces, of "wallowing" in negativity, can funnel our energies away from tolerating even the mildest turbulence of our felt experience. In my therapy practice, I've learned that being present to the rich physical substrate of the body can be especially useful in couples work.
Daily Blog
Or How I Learned to See Every Couple as the Odd Couple
Molly Layton • 5/5/2009
Too often couples make contrasts in temperament into negative stories about how their partner won't change. Could it just be that every couple is The Odd Couple?
Magazine Article
In HBO's In Treatment, Art Imitates Therapy
Molly Layton • 7/1/2008
The 43-episode HBO series In Treatment held up a mirror to our profession, immersing viewers in the ebb and flow of the psychotherapy process, and revealing what devoting a life to this work does to its practitioners.
Magazine Article
Where Self and Other Meet
Molly Layton • 1/1/2008
Making "contact" with our partner means first recognizing a subtle inner substrate where we encounter everything from boredom to anxiety to sexual interest to outright rage...and more.
Magazine Article
Learning a lesson in love
Molly Layton • 3/1/2001
David must be 15 or 16 when I notice that he's reading Rolling Stone. He sits on the piano bench pulled up to the dining room table, and Dopey sits beside him, as she also does for every supper, her little head just barely able to survey the table. Ferd chirps as always from the sunny dining room corner, and David's nose is stuck in long, long articles on Devo and David Byrne and Sting's upcoming trip to the Amazon rain forest.
Magazine Article