Dr. James Tobin Ph.D. - Psychologist
Dr. James Tobin’s Psychology Insights & Articles
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Dr. Tobin regularly publishes blog articles and posts information and writings by other authors on various issues including child development and adolescence, parenting, romantic love, men and masculinity, the psychotherapy process, the training and supervision of psychologists, sexual compulsivity and addiction, and organizational culture and change. If there is a topic you would like Dr. Tobin to feature, please email him directly at jt@jamestobinphd.com.
The Relationships We Recreate
How Unresolved Attachments, Projection, and the Unconscious Hope for Repair Shape the Partners We Choose—and the Relationships We Create James Tobin, Ph.D. Key Points We bring our relational histories into our adult relationships. Early experiences of attachment,...
The Roles We Play for One Another
How Relationships Distribute Emotion, Responsibility, Strength, and Vulnerability By James Tobin, Ph.D. Relationships do more than bring two personalities together. They quietly distribute psychological roles—and then persuade us that the resulting arrangement...
The Relationship Beneath the Conflict
Why Recurring Problems May Signal That a Couple Has Reached a Developmental Turning Point James Tobin, Ph.D. Couples often enter therapy because they have reached a conflict, distance, or impasse they can no longer resolve. The Inflection Model considers another...
The Patient Between Therapists
What Clinicians Can Learn When They See the Same Patient Differently James Tobin, Ph.D. When clinicians—such as individual and couples therapists, psychiatrists, or other treating professionals—consult with one another about a shared patient, they may discover that...
Difficult Conversations in Relationships: Why Couples Avoid Them
Difficult Conversations in Relationships: Why Couples Avoid Them KEY POINTS Couples often struggle not because they have stopped communicating, but because certain important experiences have become increasingly difficult to bring into the relationship. Every long-term...
Where Meaning Waits –
Psychotherapy and the Organization of Experience James Tobin, Ph.D. Nothing New Happened Several years ago, a patient whom I will call David came to therapy following the unexpected death of his father. He wanted to understand why his grief felt strangely muted. He...
When the Familiar Becomes Strange
Psychotherapy and the Recovery of Perception James Tobin, Ph.D. Introduction Years ago, while watching Adrian Lyne's 1986 film 9½ Weeks—a controversial and often provocative exploration of erotic desire and power—I was struck by a brief conversation that seemed almost...
Observing the Mind: On Vipassana (Insight) Meditation
Most people have had the experience of getting caught in their own mind. A thought shows up—small, almost forgettable—and then it begins pulling on everything else. One idea leads to another, then another. The body tightens, emotion builds, attention narrows. What...