Contributed by Frank Pittman

15 Results

The Playful Therapist

7 Clinicians Share Their Best Strategies

In this collection, master therapists share how they’ve used humor in ways that both enliven and enrich the work of therapy. Read more

Life Without Father

A Son Looks for Answers from a Stoic Parent Back from War

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... Read more

Six Ways to Find Comedy in Even the Darkest Moments

Shaking Your Clients Loose from Their Tragic Stances

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... Read more

The Liberating Power of Honesty

What People Don't Know Can Hurt Them. What They Don't Reveal Can Hurt Even More

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... Read more

Coping and Learning After a Client's Suicide

A Therapist Reflects on What He Might Have Done Differently

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

Blood and Guts

Violence is Central to Some of the Year's Best Films

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... Read more

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. Read more

Americocentricity

Babel and Borat force us to look beyond our culture

A new generation of filmmakers is taking us beyond the Americocentric world of mainstream cinema. Read more

Fierce Creatures

How I nearly lost my innocence in La-La Land

From the May/June 1997 issue I have just completed my first, and very likely my last, close encounter with the fierce business that has occupied my... Read more

Two new Hollywood bits bring out the beast in us Read more

Reality Sucks

Welcome to Generation X

From the July/August 1994 issue I HAD NEVER HEARD OF KURT COBAIN UNTIL THE OTHER day when he killed himself. Apparently, between suicide attempts, he had been... Read more

Appasionata

Fables and fairy tales and fires in our souls

From the May/June 1994 issue NOW THAT THE EXPIRATION DATES HAVE PASSED ON OUR familiar fables and fairy tales about gender, it is time to create some new... Read more

Bringing Up Father

How My Children Taught Me the Secret of Fatherhood

When author Frank Pittman became a father, he discovered that the childhood absence of his own father left him with no idea how to relate to his kids. This... Read more

Frank Pittman

Frank Pittman, MD, was a longtime contributing editor to The Family Therapy Networker.