Therapists need to be prepared to go against the conventional clinical wisdom in helping later-life recouplers and stepfamilies handle the unique challenges they face.

A son remembers a distant father and the bittersweet ritual that bonded them.

A young child’s bedroom is a place for magic and enchantment.

Jay Haley has been so successful in setting the terms for how we think about therapy and change (whether one agrees with him or not) that it may be hard to understand what the field of psychotherapy was like before he began commenting upon it. Probably more arguments about therapy have started by invoking Haley's name ("You know what Haley would say about this, don't you?") than that of any other figure in the field.

Esther Perel, a couples therapist whose TED talk has had more than 5 million views, believes that it’s time to challenge the mismatch between the romantic ideal and the changing realities of contemporary life.

At the Family Therapy Institute of Washington, DC they don't believe self-knowledge fires the engine of change and insist instead that therapy is really just a process of persuasion. Here, therapy is about metaphor and boldly sweeping clients along in unexpected directions. In fact, a visitor might wonder what on earth the institute's clients tell their friends about the things they're asked to do in the name of "therapy."

Helping families heal cutoffs is painstakingly delicate work, with a high risk for stumbling over buried land mines.

A daughter marvels as her mother goes from grief to an exuberant rebirth.

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?

We've become so focused on keeping children safe that we exaggerate the dangers they face despite the fact that they’ve never been safer. Still, no amount of statistical reports can get parents to stop hovering over their child. What’s a therapist to do?