This year, 3,000 practitioners came to our annual Symposium to explore the fundamental question: are we any closer to unraveling the mysteries of psychotherapy than when Freud became the first therapist to complain about client “resistance”?

Have you wandered into the wrong hotel ballroom? You’re looking for the psychotherapy conference you registered for, but this dimly lit space with the jazz trio playing on stage and the moody stage lighting seems more like a hip, after-hours club than a place where you go to earn CE credits. Besides it’s only eight o’clock in the morning. What’s going on here?!

What’s going on is the annual Psychotherapy Networker Symposium. Over the 36 years of its existence, this Symposium has earned a reputation as the profession’s most spontaneous and stimulating gathering by combining inspiration and learning in ways unheard of in the normally straitlaced world of professional conferences. Its 125-member faculty connects bestselling authors, distinguished researchers, and stalwarts of the therapy workshop circuits with street drummers, artists, dancers, and professional entertainers. The last thing anyone expects of you here is to act like a stiff therapist tied to your appointment book. Instead, you can open up to whatever fun encounter, new idea, or exciting conversation comes your way. You can engage with dynamic speakers and kindred spirits, dance to Latin rhythms with your morning cup of…