The Therapy Beat

It used to be an axiom for clinicians that therapeutic conversation and politics don’t mix. But in this high-stakes presidential election, some therapists... Read more

Today, with all the presumed advances therapists have made in reducing mental suffering from previously untreatable conditions, is there a solution, a cure, a... Read more

An OCD sufferer describes the frustrating stops and starts and misdirections of her circuitous search for help in escaping the maze of her family of origin and... Read more

OCD in children can operate like a kind of cult leader, demanding acceptance of an extreme view of a perilous reality and offering solutions that can’t be... Read more

For most of us, death is a subject hovering in the shadows of our lives, willfully ignored until it’s suddenly standing rudely before us, the world’s worst... Read more

Has pornography become a public health crisis? Read more

The brain endlessly churns out predictions about what will happen next, and when it comes to therapy outcomes, these expectations matter. Read more

A grassroots effort to serve the mental health needs of veterans enables therapists to extend to their impact. Read more

Have you ever wondered if some men in your practice are simply unable to listen, connect, and empathize with their partners? According to Pat Love, it’s more... Read more

In at least 30 percent of couples who come to therapy, partners enter the consulting room with different agendas---one wants a divorce, the other wants to save... Read more

As a therapist, how do you work with conservative parents struggling to parent their trans child? Psychotherapist Jean Malpas shares three keys to acceptance. Read more

Most therapists are aware of the perils of trying to connect with teenage clients. Teens are often brought to therapy against their will by adults, which can... Read more

I found talking to the transgender kids and their parents that I interviewed for this issue not only enlightening and educational, which I expected, but also... Read more

Parents typically view their children in the largely gendered terms society lays out for them. Rearranging that internal mind map requires tremendous effort... Read more

Until very recently, most families with transgender children had never met another family like theirs. Now parents and children from the trailblazing Ackerman... Read more

There was a time, not long ago, when all therapists needed to begin practicing their craft was a quiet room, an appointment book, a phone, and an answering... Read more

Therapists reflect on the terror attack in Paris. Read more

I suspect that no matter how sophisticated we become about sex in the abstract, there’s some half-hidden, unacknowledged suspicion within most of us that... Read more

If you’re like most couples therapists, you know how to help partners communicate more clearly, handle conflict with less uproar, and connect more... Read more

Since many of us grew up in sexual silence, therapists need to ask more probing questions for good couples therapy. Read more

Porn is polarizing. Porn is confusing. Porn can be alarming. For therapists, porn can push us out of our comfort zone and trigger negative countertransference... Read more

In a sex-starved marriage, one spouse longs for more physical touch or sex than the other, sometimes placing the marriage at risk of infidelity and divorce. Read more

Therapists too often ignore the importance of the longstanding, often unconscious stories that partners carry with them into their sexual relationship. Helping... Read more

When clients are emotionally worked up, caught in fight-flight-freeze mode, all their hard-earned skills in empathic listening and responsible (and responsive... Read more

This issue of the Networker is an attempt to explore what we can contribute as a profession to the “conversation about race,” which, as lame and ungainly... Read more

At a time when many are calling for a renewed national conversation about race, an aging, liberal, white New Yorker—who admits he’s never been a party to... Read more

The promise of the community mental health movement of the 1960s, providing high-quality psychological and social services to poor families, remains unfullled... Read more

The pioneers who birthed couples and family therapy never paused to scienti cally study the relationships they treated. Now, after systematically observing and... Read more

Questions have been raised about whether the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy, the field’s most researched treatment model, has been overstated. Read more

For 17 years, managing responses to death has become part of my work, whether originally my intention or not. I’ve aspired to helping families hang tough... Read more