Today’s writing comes after attending a blockbuster online conference* organized by Tian Dayton, a psychodramatist, who spent 90 minutes with each of five leading thinkers on trauma: Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Ed Tronick, and Richard Schwartz. What made this conference so ...

*Notice:  I would like to discuss therapist's most troublesome cases. Email or use the communication form.

The New YorkTimes recently published an article on the adolescent mental health crisis. They cited many factors but missed the center of the problem. Yes, puberty comes earlier than ever, whi...

This post started out with curiosity about why fathers are often antagonistic towards their children. There isn’t much talk about this often unjustified anger, so why is it common? One important answer came when that observation connected with the way self-made successes tend to look upon those who ...

In a way, this post is a follow-up on TIFT #48, in which I explored the power of needing to belong to one another. Here’s how it relates.

When couples seek help, the situation is almost always like this: Each partner is focused on “getting the other to…” And if they don’t, then the ultimate thre...

We talk a lot these days about attachment, but there is a more pervasive and powerful influence on everyday behavior. Attachment is what counteracts the threat of existential aloneness. But in our daily lives, and in therapeutic relationships, the interplay between cozy closeness and the threat of i...

Until very recently, psychotherapy’s future has been obscure. Just as in the early years, schools and orientations have continued to build their private troves of findings and techniques, while hoping to recruit new acolytes and ultimately triumph over the others. Every year, new therapies are es...

This post was originally published six years ago and is updated here. As indicated in TIFT #1, I continue to be impressed with the value of seeing people as a kind of sandwich with an adult self layered on top and a very active child. Once open to the concept, it is remarkable how often one finds th...

Originally Published 7/10/2010.

*** Now Available: Attachment to Your Therapist: A Conversation. This series of posts in expanded E-Book form, on Amazon.***

A reader submitted this wonderfull comment:

Anyway, I've been in therapy, on and off, for about 12 years. Dealing with "neurosis" I guess...

How can we observe what goes on outside of consciousness? When we humans do things clearly against our own best interests and even against own free will, we can safely surmise that some other agency in the mind is at work. I call that agency the "nonconscious problem solver." Addictions are one of t...

A theory is only a theory, a plausible explanation of reality. But, when a theory grows out of one area of science, then comes full circle and confirms a completely independent set of observations, we gain confidence. In the case of psychotherapy, knowledge coming out of teaching rodents to be af...

In TIFT #42, I introduced the idea of dread. It may have seemed dark, but It’s really hopeful. Why? Because at the time, long ago, when the mind first sought to avoid, there didn’t seem to be any alternative. But those bad times are over and now we have a better way. By facing the dread in a cont...