Emergency relief or other work with traumatized people is always demanding and wearing: it frequently poses the risk of vicariously traumatizing caretakers, and yet, our field isn't well prepared to help them. As a matter of course, we recommend supervision for therapists and social workers, and we encourage clinicians to discuss difficult cases with colleagues, but we don't always recognize that, for people working with traumatized clients, just talking about it may not be enough.

After 22 years, I can still see Amy sitting there, cross-legged, with her arms folded across her chest and her dirty blond hair falling down over her face. She was perched on the hood of my car. It was 9:00 p.m., and I was just leaving my office. Amy glared at me as I approached. Our therapy session had ended five hours earlier.

Ted was like many older men I'd seen who, after suffering sudden medical catastrophes, figured they had no other choice but to surrender to their dire circumstances. He hadn't asked to see a psychologist; in fact, he had never in his life dreamed of speaking with one. Yet I was supposed to march into his hospital room and sound some battle cry, compelling him to fight to live again.

Not long ago, most therapists who heard a story like Albert Grow's would have thought about what his experience in Vietnam did to his relationship with his family, his community and his sense of self. Few would have given much thought to what it did to his biochemistry. That is about to change.

Every couples therapist knows the experience. Just moments ago, as you talked to the wife and then her husband, you were struck by how likable each one seemed. You sensed their warmth, their humor. But now you've hit on one of those issues—perhaps it's a conflict about an in-law, or something about sex, or even the proverbial struggle about the toothpaste tube—and suddenly the people whose company you were enjoying earlier appear to have left the room.

Traumatic experiences are often the root of athletic and other kinds of performance blocks.

Review of We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s and The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children

Sometimes it can be easier to argue about witch-hunts than risk confronting the dark, unsavory reality of child abuse.

When a small child has been traumatized and frozen in fear, the releasing and disarming power of play can be the key to healing.

Therapists reflect on the terror attack in Paris.

The increasingly accessible and inexpensive technology of virtual reality now enables us to incorporate digital Skinner boxes in our practices that can enhance healing for trauma survivors.