Facing Our Fears - Why We Avoid Doing Couples Therapy, by Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson

Removing the Masks, by David Schnarch

A Matter of Choice - Deciding Whether to Be Right or Be Married, by Terry Real

In or Out? - Treating the Mixed-Agenda Couple, by William Doherty

West Meets East

As mindfulness practices work their way into the therapy mainstream, we’re asking more clinically sophisticated questions: Who needs what practice when? What are the downsides?

Suggesting Mindfulness

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

When Meditation Isn’t Enough

 A psychotherapist discusses how to help clients transform the disruptive feelings and thoughts that they’ve learned to simply observe during meditation.

Shadow Side of Meditation

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

Relational Meditation

Being anti-Pharma is hardly edgy business; it’s now the established intellectual position of most academics, not to mention everyone.  Insurances are refusing to pay for the branded psych drugs, doctors are being forbidden from consulting; and, simultaneously, Big Pharma is abandoning psychiatry.  Pfizer has all but closed its CNS division, temporarily pretending to still care about something called Pristiq that no one takes.  By next year, all of your love-to-hate drugs– Zyprexa, Geodon, Seroquel– will be generic.  There are no new blockbusters coming, no innovative treatments, no Big Pharma research money.  By 2013, you’ll have gotten what you were not careful to wish for.

UPDATE:  Another response in the NYT: In Defense of Antidepressants.

AND:  Psychiatrists respond at NYRB.

You know about the 80/20 rule, right? It’s the guideline that 80% of your return comes from 20% of your investment. For example, 80% of your referrals come from 20% of the people in your network. 80% of your new business comes from 20% of your prospects. 80% of your new contacts come from 20% of the networking activities you engage in. And so on.

Like all such guidelines, this one is inexact, but helpful. If used correctly, it makes you stop and think. Where are most of your returns coming from? And where is most of your effort going?

Imagine how much less time and money you could spend on marketing if you could simply identify the 20% of your current efforts that are really the only ones that matter. You could let go of 80% of what you’re doing…

Continues here.

The Road to Mastery
By Scott Miller and Mark Hubble
Therapists usually enter the field because they’re drawn to the work. But whether they excel depends largely on their professional community.

Building a Culture of Excellence
By Bob Bertolino
We all have stories about the bureaucracies that stifle clinical creativity and seem to exist primarily to generate meaningless paperwork. Here’s a tale about a community agency that actually works, and how it got that way.

What Therapists Want
By Barry Duncan
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.

Opening the Path
By Barry Duncan
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.

From Isolation to Connection
By Peter Fraenkel
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 community.

Mapping the Future
By Mary Sykes Wylie
Emerging from their monastic little cells, 3,000 psychotherapists had a
schmooze-fest celebrating the power of face-to-face

Experiencing Presence – Some Thoughts

Saving the Game: The Use of Gaming within Psychotherapy

Technology Enhanced Coaching

Cutting Edge Technology to Aid People with Mental Health Issues

Certificate Programme Services: Certificate in the Therapeutic Use of Technology

 

There might not be a piece of tech more due for an update than the cash register. Enter Square, a payment platform created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. With the aid of a tiny magnetic card reader that attaches to a smart phone, Square lets anyone process credit cards. It might not do away with paper entirely — plenty of people still prefer cash — but you certainly don’t need to wait for a receipt: sign on the screen, and Square sends a copy straight to e-mail.

Download the “Square” app and off you go.  More info at squareup.com.

Challenging Your Critical Inner Voice: An Introduction to Voice Therapy May 6th, 2011 by Lisa Firestone, Ph.D.

What Works in Therapy: Translating 40 Years of Outcome Research
May 26th, 2011 by Scott D. Miller, Ph.D.

Theory and Treatment of Compulsive Buying
June 24th, 2011 by April Lane Benson, Ph.D.

Voice Dialogue: Transformative Therapy
September 9th, 2011 by Francesca Starr, MA, LPC

Countertransference Issues in Trauma Therapy
December 9th, 2011 by Robert T. Muller, Ph.D., C. Psych.

The Attuned Therapist By Mary Sykes Wylie and Lynn Turner In recent years, attachment theory, with its emphasis on early bonding, connection and relationship, has exerted as much influence over the field of psychotherapy as any other perspective. Why then do some critics believe that it’s sending therapists off on the wrong track? Bringing Up Baby By Jerome Kagan While therapists may consider some intuitively appealing ideas about human development—like attachment theory—beyond dispute, the researcher’s job is to challenge unproven explanations shaped more by our biases and preconceptions than by hard evidence. The Verdict Is In By Alan Sroufe and Daniel Siegel Fifty years of research has confirmed that the emotional quality of our earliest attachment relationships is central to our well-being as adults. The Nightgown By Bruce Jay Friedman A determined patient searches for therapeutic insight from an unlikely source.

 

Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago. Insurance company reimbursement rates and policies that discourage talk therapy are part of the reason. A psychiatrist can earn $150 for three 15-minute medication visits compared with $90 for a 45-minute talk therapy session.

Competition from psychologists and social workers — who unlike psychiatrists do not attend medical school, so they can often afford to charge less — is the reason that talk therapy is priced at a lower rate. There is no evidence that psychiatrists provide higher quality talk therapy than psychologists or social workers.