The Field

From Attachment to Creativity

Highlights from the 2016 Symposium

At a time in which our society seems immersed in a toxic stew of fear and anger, this year's Symposium provided a celebration of human values and ideas that... Read more

Therapists reflect on the terror attack in Paris. 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

Losing Our War on Stress

It’s time to reconsider our approach

Psychologist Kelly McGonigal believes that stress isn’t the public health menace it’s usually made out to be—our compulsion to avoid it is often the... Read more

The View From Black America

Listening to the Untold Stories

Many poor, young, black people see themselves as trapped behind a wall-less prison with no exits. They know all too well that their daily experience—whether... Read more

Community Mental Health Today

Encompassing the Big & the Small

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

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

Destigmatizing Autism

The Future of Neurodiversity

Author Steve Silberman discusses what it means to view autistic people as individuals seeing the world in a different way, rather than just a checklist of... Read more

What the Financial Crisis Reveals About Our Psyche and Values

Confronting our Definitions of Wealth in the Therapy Room

The current economic crisis may be no more than a rather large bump in the golden road of endlessly self-renewing American prosperity. Still, it's hard not to... Read more

Are you a therapist that's "marriage friendly?" It's the inclination towards helping clients in good relationships stay together. Read more

America’s Opportunity Chasm

A Noted Scholar Documents Our Decline in Social Mobility

Robert Putnam documents the myriad psychological, health, and political consequences of the ever-growing disparities between rich and poor in America today. Read more

IFS for Self-Compassion

Some Forms of Self-Love Are Harder than Others

IFS founder Dick Schwartz believes a genuine state of self-compassion entails a journey into multiple parts of yourself that may include the good, the bad, the... Read more

Moments of Meaning

Unexpected Lessons from Practice

Three clinicians share stories of challenging cases that show how the most surprising outcomes often have nothing to do with therapeutic brilliance or... Read more

Life after Trauma

What are the possibilities for post-traumatic growth?

The new emphasis on the transformative power of trauma can be a template for false assumptions about the “gift” of suffering and the meaning of recovery. Read more

Personality and Habit Change

Are You an Upholder, Obliger, Questioner, or Rebel?

In her first book, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin tried to answer the question “How do I become happier?” With her new book on changing the habits... Read more

How Psychotherapy Helps Us Recover the Beauty in Our Lives

Questions for Helping Therapy Clients Reclaim Meaning

Many walk into the therapist's consulting room exactly at the moment that they have been stripped to the core of their being. While not at the physical... Read more

Uncovering the Source of Suicidality with Brain Science

Are Serotonin Levels the Key Factor in Suicidal Depression?

I'm at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in northern Manhattan. My guide, Victoria, has been studying the brains of people who committed suicide, and... Read more

Since it was introduced as an anesthetic in the 1970s, ketamine has occupied an uncertain pharmacological status. It’s been used as both a Vietnam-era... Read more

Rediscovering Happiness

The Use of Positive Childhood Triggers in Psychotherapy

To create deep change, we need to help people mine the sources of intense pleasure in their lives, wherever they may find them. Read more

Brave New Couples

What Can Science Tell Us about the Changing Face of Couplehood Today?

Susan Johnson, developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, discusses what the science of love says about what couples can expect when they rebel too much... Read more

Getting Over Weight?

A Critic of our Cultural Obsession Goes Too Far

A critic of one of our central cultural obsessions goes too far Read more

Spitting in the Client's Soup

Don’t Overthink Your Interventions

In our profession, it’s often more alluring to explore new gimmicks than to acknowledge that our success largely hinges on simple, commonsense factors. Read more

What clinical, ethical, and legal issues should we be considering as distance therapy becomes a more common form of practice? Read more

The State of Our Art

Do Our Old Ways Fit the New Times?

While the number of people in psychotherapy keeps declining, surveys reveal that potential clients would still rather talk to a therapist than fill a... Read more

It’s time we address the psychological toll of the daily bombardment of information that permeates our lives. Read more

To move forward, our profession needs a more consistent message about what we have to offer. Read more

Manualized psychotherapy is squeezing out people on the margins of mainstream society. Read more

To stay relevant in a changing world, we need to address the engagement styles of today’s prospective clients. Read more

From the moment I met the Correys in my waiting room, I was baffled about why they were together. Frank was tall, good looking and suave; Donna dowdy and... Read more

Stronger Medicine

Anti-Depressants Haven't Made Therapy Obsolete

Americans have a history of valuing quick-fix solutions to difficult problems. But the simplistic psychopharmacological approach to depressive disorders... Read more