Of marriage, the philosopher Alan de Botton has written, “Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.” My husband…

This week, I came across several statements in the professional counseling literature that said, in the simplest terms, that therapists should be free of psychological distress and not let our own issues or struggles come into our work with clients. On one level, these guidelines make perfect sense. Clients don’t…

A response to Gary Greenberg’s op-ed, Should Therapists Write About Patients? — In an op-ed for the New York Times, psychotherapist and author Gary Greenberg recounts a recent mishap in writing about his patients. After obtaining consent and/or taking elaborate attorney-approved steps to render his patients’ stories unrecognizable even to themselves, Greenberg published about some of his work with patients. Despite his…

Prior to leaving town for the Thanksgiving holiday, I felt profoundly lonely. Then I went away, visited with my brother, sister-in-law, and my nephews over the holiday, and didn’t feel lonely. When I got back home, the loneliness was waiting for me. Science tells us that loneliness is toxic to…