In this collection, master therapists share how they’ve used humor in ways that both enliven and enrich the work of therapy. Read more

Even though I knew I wanted to be a father when I grew up, I didn’t know exactly what skills were required. We of the ’40s and ’50s grew up with fathers... Read more

Therapy, in order to shake people loose from their tragic stances and bounce them into the human comedy, is at its best when it is funny, when the tragic... Read more

When we therapists believe a secret's revelations would be dangerous, the client receives a frightening message about him- or herself and about the world. We... Read more

I've been in full-time private practice for almost 30 years. In that time, three patients in my practice killed themselves. Each suicide has left me... Read more

Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of articles that have appeared in the Networker over the past four decades, we’ve chosen a small sampling that captures... Read more

When TV finally came, in the early '50s, the world it brought into our living rooms was black and white, and dumbed way down. Newsmen now had faces, and, as... Read more

What separates screen actors who remain enshrined in our memory from those who just momentarily catch our eye? Read more

If you're like me, you've noticed that movies don't make as much sense as they used to. Nevertheless, I suspect that there's still an audience somewhere out... Read more

The Coen brothers specialize in redefining the rules of whatever movie genre they happen to be subverting. Read more

While lions and sharks go into frenzy at the smell of blood, at the sight of blood, moviegoers seem to experience a heightening of all emotions, sometimes... Read more

Two hugely successful films, released on the same weekend this summer, revealed the flip side of the Hollywood experience. Read more

Part of the magic of Hollywood movies is that the larger-than-life heroes and heroines up there on the screen don't age and wither and deteriorate like the... Read more

Some comedies about unwed motherhood reveal deeper truths about those subjects we can laugh about and those we can't. Read more

American Gangster, Michael Clayton, and 3:10 to Yuma. Our complex relationship with our screen idols is at the root of the Hollywood movie experience. Read more

Becoming Jane and Hairspray. Evoking a great movie tradition of the past, this summer, Fred and Ginger met both Jane Austen and the Linblad family. Read more

A Mighty Heart, Away from Her, and Evening. It takes courage to live life, and to live with the life you chose. Read more

As we go through our lifetime metamorphoses, we adapt to those whom we like and hate, envy and fear. We fall in and out of love, and emulate and identify with... Read more

Dissecting the fantasy of heroism. Read more

A new generation of filmmakers is taking us beyond the Americocentric world of mainstream cinema. Read more

This fall, at a time when competent, sensible leadership seems in especially short supply around the globe, three films appeared almost simultaneously to... Read more

One of his biographers, Patrick McGilligan, insists that "marijuana shaped [Robert Altman]'s storytelling. Read more

Pittman reviews the controversial film Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, from a psychotherapist's point of view, discussing how it dissects the... Read more

I wonder what the [Ingmar Bergman] of today would think of [Bill Murray]'s aging Don Juan, who plays for comic effect the loneliness that's so obsessed... Read more

I don't know if [Kevin Costner]'s loose-limbed approach would relieve the tension in L.A. But somehow he has such a fully developed emotional immune system... Read more

The camera moves in so close on each of the characters that we feel we can read their minds. Such is the skill with which this remarkable film has been acted... Read more

[Michael Moore] hammers away at the now-established fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the only place on earth regularly searched and... Read more

From the May/June 1997 issue I have just completed my first, and very likely my last, close encounter with the fierce business that has occupied my... Read more

Two new Hollywood bits bring out the beast in us Read more

From the July/August 1994 issue I HAD NEVER HEARD OF KURT COBAIN UNTIL THE OTHER day when he killed himself. Apparently, between suicide attempts, he had been... Read more

From the May/June 1994 issue NOW THAT THE EXPIRATION DATES HAVE PASSED ON OUR familiar fables and fairy tales about gender, it is time to create some new... Read more

Wharton set her story in 1870, in the New York of her youth, a time that spawned heroines bursting the bounds of societal restraint and struggling to be free... Read more

When Networker film critic and in-house provocateur Frank Pittman wrote this piece 25 years ago, the concept of “political correctness” was just beginning... Read more

When author Frank Pittman became a father, he discovered that the childhood absence of his own father left him with no idea how to relate to his kids. This... Read more