This post is a look at the incredible variety of ways the inner non-conscious mind seeks to ensure our survival. For some time, I have wanted to try laying out the range of possibilities. This is not the first time anyone has made a list of such strategies, but prominent efforts have been limited...

This post brings material from a pilot training program a group of us have given online for six psychiatric residencies around the country. The subject is one of the two main requirements for memory reconsolidation (MR), the “queen” of change mechanisms because its effects are lasting and effortl...

Lately I’ve been thinking about how our inner “thinking fast” mind interacts with our conscious mind, the one we normally sit in. This has brought into focus the ways my anxious clients dwell on thoughts that serve only to make their bad feelings more intense. I have been calling them “amplifiers...

Today's post is to share a recent experience teaching psychotherapy to psychiatry residents from raw beginners to those with some experience. A group of us from the Psychotherapy Caucus, a special interest group of 1500 psychiatrists within the American Psychiatric Association, developed and pres...

Darwin shocked the world into a new level of humility when he showed that humans aren’t the center of the world but derived from apes. Well, the wave of humility hasn’t quite finished its washing up the beach. The last barrier is consciousness-centrism. I, too, have been guilty of seeing the mind...

In this post, I want to suggest some principles that guide my work with couples as well as how I think about them in individual therapy. These are mostly ideas I haven’t seen in the literature, and I hope they will help to simplify as well as inform the work we do.

First, when I see couples in t...

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I was just interviewed by Jeffrey Magnavita and Jennifer Kelly on modernizing psychotherapy and how to teach it. This is part of a series on "Eminent Psychotherapists" on YouTube. It's my best to date!

Jeffery Smith MD

Writing a book is not just putting down what one knows, it’s a journey of discovery. Chapter 2 of the upcoming How Psychotherapy Works: Navigating the Therapeutic Space with Confidence is about coming to appreciate and even love the inner selves we encounter in our work. The clarity I want to sha...

As chair of the organizing committee I want personally to invite followers of Tuesday Is For Therapists to come to Istanbul, October 10-12, 2025 for an exciting conference focused on foundational principles and processes that cut across multiple therapies. And today, the submission portal is open fo...

This post is built on what I often say to adult clients with ADHD. 

ADHD has advantages as well as challenges

We start by countering the negatives about ADHD. This form of neurodiversity comes with definite advantages along with the challenges. The main positives are creativity, hyperfocus, ...

One of my major goals is to promote familiarity with and appreciation of the inner self that has a huge role in ours and our clients' daily lives. It is the source of our truest motivations and most authentic feelings. Today I’ll talk, mostly from experience, about how the inner mind evolves in i...

For many, knowledge of what is fair is taken for granted and not even thought about, but in therapy it can be a source of real questions. Clients wonder what life owes them and what they should give back. With dysfunctional families and trauma, children grow up with skewed ideas of what is fair a...