Mary Sykes Wylie
Mary Sykes Wylie, PhD, is a former senior editor of the Psychotherapy Networker.
Contributed by Mary Sykes Wylie
64 Results
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. Read More
Living Brave
From Vulnerability to Daring
With millions of people having seen her TED talks and read her books, researcher and bestselling author Brené Brown is a phenomenon. But aside from her talents as a speaker, teacher, and writer, why is she such a runaway hit? Haven’t therapists been writing about her professional specialty—the malign impact of shame—for decades? Perhaps her vast appeal has to do with how she’s turned the concepts of shame and vulnerability on their heads. Read More
From Attachment to Creativity
Highlights from the 2016 Symposium
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 Read More
The Unspeakable Language of Sex
Why Are We Still so Tongue-Tied?
If you’re like most couples therapists, you know how to help partners communicate more clearly, handle conflict with less uproar, and connect more emphatically. But 50 years after the so-called sexual revolution, many therapists are still unsure about how and when to talk about sexual issues. In our obsession with pop sexuality, we’ve vastly overestimated the power of sexual acts while vastly underestimating the feelings associated with them. Read More
Community Mental Health Today
Encompassing the Big & the Small
The promise of the community mental health movement of the 1960s, providing high-quality psychological and social services to poor families, remains unfullled. But today, two professionals bring together both a grasp of broader social issues and a store of practical clinical wisdom to offer complementary perspectives on how to best help poor communities. Read More
What the Financial Crisis Reveals About Our Psyche and Values
Confronting our Definitions of Wealth in the Therapy Room
The current economic crisis may be no more than a rather large bump in the golden road of endlessly self-renewing American prosperity. Still, it's hard not to have a sense of foreboding that, this time, things really are different. Perhaps this is a good time to revisit some of our basic assumptions about wealth---what it means to us as Americans, how it defines us as a people, how it influences the way we think about ourselves, about freedom, success, and happiness, about what we really want from life, and what the American Dream really means to us. Read More
The State of Our Art
Do Our Old Ways Fit the New Times?
Larger than Life
Marianne Walters Was Family Therapy's Foremost Feminist
Marianne Walters didn't invent a brilliant new therapeutic paradigm, publish a large and magisterial body of research, or establish her own unique school of clinical practice. Yet Walters probably had as great an impact on the overall clinical zeitgeist of family therapy as any of the master theory-builders and gurus. Along with her three comrades in arms---Betty Carter, Peggy Papp, and Olga Silverstein---she formed The Women's Project in Family Therapy in 1977, once called "the first, biggest, longest-running feminist road show." It was a combination feminist think tank and SWAT team, which, in public workshops all over the country, challenged the underlying sexism in some of the most basic notions of family therapy. Read More
The Mindfulness Explosion
The Perils of Mainstream Acceptance
By replacing the exotic aura of spirituality with the language of science and a down-to-earth self-help approach, mindfulness has brought practices once considered New Age hokum into mainstream acceptance. But as it increasingly becomes a product to be sold in the marketplace, does it risk losing something vital to its transformative power? Read More