This issue maps out not only what the latest science tells us about how emotion works, but also how therapists can more fully acknowledge within themselves the embodied experience of emotion in the consulting room, and consciously put it to use in clinical work. After all, psychotherapy effectiveness studies increasingly tell us that the most important factor in every approach is the connection between therapist and client.

Neuroscientists recently established emotion is the prime force shaping how we cope with life’s challenges. Psychotherapists are beginning to learn how to work with emotion, rather than trying to control it and create change through purely cognitive or behavioral means.

Andrew Weil, Mary Pipher, and Dan Siegel, along with 150 other presenters, not only helped the Networker Symposium celebrate its 35th anniversary, but illuminated a new vision of the integrative mental healthcare of the future.

All therapy is about stories—the stories clients tell therapists and the (we hope) more truthful and helpful stories therapists and clients construct together. Therapy itself is really a story, or stories, about why people suffer, how they heal, and what therapists can do to promote the latter. In a sense, this magazine is a kind of meta-story—or meta-meta story—about all those other stories, a narrative in which we’re both the tellers and the told.

What do we know today about the effectiveness of psychotherapy that we didn’t know 30 years ago? Even more important, how do we improve our treatments?

Remember mimeograph machines, the Milan Group, the False Memory Foundation, DSM–III, the Family Therapy Networker, and private practice before managed care? Take a stroll down memory land and revisit some of the ups and downs of our glorious profession over the past three decades.

The State of the Art, the Networker’s first-ever virtual conference, offered an opportunity for leaders in our field who disagree to debate each other. Here’s your chance to hear what they said and consider what it means for the future of our profession.

Over the years, our front-of-the-book department has not only given readers plenty of tasty factoids to chew on, but also revealed how the seasons of the profession turn, and turn again, over time.

When it comes to achieving excellence, author Daniel Coyle has found a common pattern of focused, guided practice and instruction that leads to success.

With stalemated cases in which the task of self-acceptance feels impossible, the therapist needs to offer more than compassion and encouragement.