The Therapy Beat

Remember mimeograph machines, the Milan Group, the False Memory Foundation, DSM–III, the Family Therapy Networker, and private practice before managed care... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

The old compact between family and society—each doing its part to protect and promote the whole—seems to be badly strained, if not flat-out broken. Thus... Read more

Our growing understanding of attachment and the processes that shape the parenting brain are opening new possibilities for helping stressed-out parents who are... Read more

An alternative to the old talking cure is expanding the knowledge base of psychotherapy as we recognize the role that exercise, nutrition, spirituality... Read more

- Mental health systems under stress - The timing of trauma treatment - The revolt against DSM-5 Read more

Traditional approaches to helping parents too often fail to address their profound sense of disempowerment and frustration. It’s time to find new ways to... Read more

This issue’s contributors aren’t just convinced that therapists should do more couples therapy, but that risk-taking and turning up the heat in the therapy... Read more

Conventional therapeutic wisdom aside, people typically don’t hurt each other because they’re out of touch, unable to communicate, or can’t help... Read more

Do you want to be right or be married? Okay, now pause, think, breathe . . . and choose between First Consciousness and Second Consciousness. Read more

At least 30 percent of couples coming to therapy have fundamentally different agendas about whether to try to save the marriage. If we’re ever going to... Read more

- Chilean miners' long-term trauma - Training good therapists - The question of bullying Read more

While meditation is usually considered solitary, two therapists discover that the couples intervention they’ve been using for over 20 years is actually a... Read more

As mindfulness practices work their way into the psychotherapeutic mainstream, we’re starting to ask more clinically sophisticated questions: Who needs what... Read more

As a clinical intervention, mindfulness is best understood by stripping away its aura of mystical spirituality and understanding the crucial role suggestion... Read more

A Zen teacher describes the benefits and limitations of traditional meditation practice. Read more

As the writers in this issue powerfully demonstrate, medical science has made extended dying and its impact on relatives and loved ones—what psychologist... Read more

We’re living longer and longer, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’d choose to live through a painful terminal illnesses. Do we have the right to... Read more

A perverse set of financial incentives within the medical system too often leads to the promotion of maximum treatment, no matter what. When this happens... Read more

Both doing psychotherapy and the writing of fiction are about stories. The essence of the art of both pursuits is the openness to the possibility that, no... Read more

The Networker has always been a community affair. From our first issue, every glimmer of an idea for an article or theme of this magazine has been a group... Read more

Therapists usually enter the field because they’re drawn to it and have innate capacities to do the work. But whether they excel depends largely on their... Read more

We all have stories about the bureaucracies that stifle clinical creativity and seem to exist primarily to generate meaningless paperwork. Here’s a tale... Read more

A close-up look at a 20-year, multinational study that captures the heart of therapists’ aspirations—and perhaps the soul of our professional identity. Read more

Down for the count, a therapist again discovers that even the most hopeless sessions can have a positive outcome if you stay with the process. Read more

A modest proposal about how to get out of your cubbyhole, enliven your conversations with others in the field, and experience a new kind of professional... Read more

While therapists may consider some intuitively appealing ideas about human development---like attachment theory---beyond dispute, the researcher's job is to... Read more

Fifty years of research has confirmed that the emotional quality of our earliest attachment relationships is central to our well-being as adults. Read more

A determined patient searches for therapeutic insight from an unlikely source. Read more