Has the time come to consider whether the profound changes in our economy, technology, and culture over these last couple of decades have opened up a breach in the very experience of intimate connection in middle-class families around the world? And if so, what can we as therapists do about it?

Lou Cozolino believes that attachment theory and neuroscience may offer the key to transforming our troubled educational system.

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.

All couples fight, but the fights that really define the relationship are always the same thing: whether partners feel they have a safe, secure connection with each other.

All couples fight, but the fights that really define the relationship are always about the same thing: whether partners feel they have a safe, secure connection with each other.

Clinicians have long considered theories that emphasize inborn predispositions as antiquated and even reactionary. but the work of researchers like Jerome Kagan and startling developments in fields like behavioral molecular genetics are making therapists think again.

With traumatized adolescent clients, it’s emotion that gradually changes emotion—not rational explanation or interpretation, not snazzy techniques or “fake it till you make it” exhortations.

In recent years, attachment theory, with its emphasis on early bonding, connection and relationship, has exerted as much influence over the field of psychotherapy as any other perspective. Why then do some critics believe that it's sending therapists off on the wrong track?

While therapists may consider some intuitively appealing ideas about human development---like attachment theory---beyond dispute, the researcher's job is to challenge unproven explanations shaped more by our biases and preconceptions than by hard evidence.