Your column, as always, is terrific. I have one thought to add, if I may. Many therapists, like many people, get caught in situations where they are underperforming. If a therapist is talented, has helped you, and can hear feedback, it is often useful to clearly tell the therapist what is wrong for you, what you want, and see if they can get it together. Sometimes the therapist will realize their error and the therapy can return. One has so much invested in these relationships and new ones can be hard to find. Clearly all therapy situations are different, but someone trained in evidence based techniques should be able to take feedback, take responsibility and work toward a good resolution. If they can't, let em go. One way to do this effectively is to see a second coach/therapist specifically for help in how to manage this situation. It can be a one time investment that will help you see if you can restore a helpful relationship.

Gary Kamiya was as completely wrong about the Middle East before Iraq as the Bushites. He has learned nothing from the past three years. He has returned to his historic wrongness again. The fighting in the Middle East has zero to do with his sense of justice. His notions of what needs to happen are based in his own prejudice, not any discernible facts. Iran, Iraq, Taliban, Shiites, Sunnis, Saudis, Islamic Brotherhood, Al Queda, and on and on simply disappear from his radar. Please, let him edit, not write. He's got no more plan for peace in the Middle East than Dick Cheney.

I have had a similar experience with poor white kids. I don't think the issue is race. And it is wrong to call children "scum." The frustration I felt, when I decided to take two children into my home, was the enormous sense of sadness that I just couldn't do enough to help them make the jump from impoverishment and lack of expectations to a sense that life had something good for them. The kids in this story are trying to raise themselves. That will never work. The price they pay will be a life that no one wants to have. For the rest of us, our world is sadder and more dangerous. I have tried social service to help kids and I have tried taking them into my home at age 11. What they needed was someone, preferably parents, to take care of them well from day one. I don't think anything else helps. Good article.

Asking other people to go out and protest because you think it is a good idea is a lot like asking other people to join the army because you think it is a good idea. Go do it yourself if it is so important. Gary Kamiya clearly wants other people to get their acts together. They already have. I suspect that people in this country are way smarter and better able to understand the reality of how to end this war than he comprehends. Attacking Democrats, who are really doing a lot more than the press predicted is foolish. Congress is moving this debate much further than the press. There is a huge antiwar movement. It just threw the Republicans out of office. Keep up the good work, America. We have come a long way and we will continue to fight.

Just curious- If the accused players are cheaters and their records shouldn't count, does that mean that the Yankees from 1998-2000 are the modern Black Sox - a team of many cheaters- whose World Championships should be revoked?

when the clinton camp implies obama is a muslim, it is quite obviously different than huckabee's advertisements. obama has decided to respond by telling the truth- that he is a christian. (I couldn't care less what he is, I just like the truth.) the underlying notion of your article, that the clinton smears can be ignored as irrelevant, is offensive and wrong. the clinton campaign is partly based on swift boating obama. it falsely impugns his religion, his race, his youth. has anyone called huckabee a muslim lately?

Gestalt Psychology, developed in the first half of the 20th century, was devoted to this concept- "The whole precedes the parts." We want to believe that we can contruct a picture of the world, but neurologically, this is not how our brains are wired. We are wired to see patterns and then fits the pieces we observe later into the patterns we carry with us all the time. Thus, the whole precedes the parts, we see what we have always seen. Real change, therefore, comes not from seeing some new fact. It comes from accepting a new whole, a new pattern. No one ever convinces someone else of something with one new fact. But we can learn, we can accept new things. It is just very hard.