Consider the classic hypothetical scenario: Your house is on fire and you can take only three things with you before the entire structure becomes engulfed in flames. What would you take? Laptops and external hard drives aside, people’s responses to this question differ wildly. This diversity results from people’s flexibility in ascribing unique value to objects ranging from a hand-scrawled note from a loved one to a threadbare t-shirt that others might consider worthless.

Consider the classic hypothetical scenario: Your house is on fire and you can take only three things with you before the entire structure becomes engulfed in flames. What would you take? Laptops and external hard drives aside, people’s responses to this question differ wildly. This diversity results from people’s flexibility in ascribing unique value to objects ranging from a hand-scrawled note from a loved one to a threadbare t-shirt that others might consider worthless.

Consider the classic hypothetical scenario: Your house is on fire and you can take only three things with you before the entire structure becomes engulfed in flames. What would you take? Laptops and external hard drives aside, people’s responses to this question differ wildly. This diversity results from people’s flexibility in ascribing unique value to objects ranging from a hand-scrawled note from a loved one to a threadbare t-shirt that others might consider worthless.

Question: Are antidepressants effective or ineffective? Answer: Yes! [More]

Question: Are antidepressants effective or ineffective? Answer: Yes! [More]

A remarkably important event has just occurred in the world of psychology:  A leading, peer-reviewed journal has published the strongest evidence yet that psychodynamic psychotherapy -- “talk therapy” -- works. In fact, it not only works, it keeps working long after the sessions stop.

Full disclosure: We report this not as disinterested observers, but as psychotherapists and researchers on the process and efficacy of therapy. Our book , “Handbook of Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” summarized the body of research through last year and another will follow late this year. Still, we can state as fact: The movement to establish an evidence base for psychodynamic therapy has taken a giant new step forward.

A remarkably important event has just occurred in the world of psychology:  A leading, peer-reviewed journal has published the strongest evidence yet that psychodynamic psychotherapy -- “talk therapy” -- works. In fact, it not only works, it keeps working long after the sessions stop.

Full disclosure: We report this not as disinterested observers, but as psychotherapists and researchers on the process and efficacy of therapy. Our book , “Handbook of Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” summarized the body of research through last year and another will follow late this year. Still, we can state as fact: The movement to establish an evidence base for psychodynamic therapy has taken a giant new step forward.

At every stage of early development, human babies lag behind infants from other species.  A kitten can amble across a room within moments of birth and catch its first mouse within weeks, while its wide-eyed human counterpart takes months to make her first step, and years to learn even simple tasks, such as how to tie a shoelace or skip a rope, let alone prepare a three-course meal. Yet, in the cognitive race, human babies turn out to be much like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable: emerging triumphant after a slow and steady climb to the finish. As adults, we drive fancy sports cars, leap nimbly across football fields and ballet stages, write lengthy dissertations on every conceivable subject, and launch rockets into space.  We have a mastery over our selves and our environments that is peculiar to our species.

Yet, this victory seems puzzling. In the fable, the tortoise wins the race because the hare takes a nap. But, if anything, human infants nap even more than kittens! And unlike the noble tortoise, babies are helpless, and more to the point, hopeless . They could not learn the basic skills necessary to their independent survival even if they tried. How do human babies manage to turn things around in the end?

Last time you told someone “I’ll call you,” did you mean it? [More]