Welcome

Hi,

Welcome to the Psychology Today website. The magazine's editorial staff and a number of outside contributors, some of them well-known, have begun delivering regular dollops of news and observations, all aimed at shedding light on the intricacies and oddities of human behavior as refracted through their uniquely informed perspectives.

Why blogs?

The short answer is that there needs to be a reliable site (that would be us) that aggregates quality information and observations about human behavior. Not everything worthy of discussion can fit into our magazine. And some events wash by in the general cultural tide that are worth pausing over and paying specific attention to, so we need a venue for adding richer, or sometimes just funnier, meaning. Besides, there are things of value that cannot survive a publication's lead time into print. By dint of our experience in the trenches, PT's staffers and specialist contributors have accumulated a fair amount of knowledge that can add insight to breaking events.

Superstars on the PT blogs

You'll see this center is home to several distinctive blogs. PT editors have their own blog, Brainstorm, (where you are now) and we all contribute when the spirit moves us.

"In Practice" features psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer scrutinizing psychiatry, culture, and everything in between and adding his humanist/scientist perspective. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely exposes some of the quirks of our everyday decision-making processes in "Predictably Irrational." In one of his earliest posts, he described the results of research from that most august source, HotorNot.com. Sociologist Satoshi Kanazawa aims to make us more intelligible to ourselves by sharing tough-minded insights from evolutionary psychology. And Steven Kotler writes about the science of sport in "The Playing Field." This is just the starting lineup. We are in the process of adding even more power to this formidable team which brings me to you...

Are you a future PT blogger?

We invite those of you who love the blogging medium and feel you have a unique perspective on psychotherapy to pitch us your own blog, which we'd host alongside the others. Ideally, we are seeking clinicians who have specific expertise and are comfortable discussing aspects of their practice that do not raise confidentiality concerns. You could blog anonymously in the style of a journal, to retain confidentiality. Perhaps you do specialist work (OCD? Abuse survivors?) from which you glean insight that you'd like to share. Perhaps you work with many veterans of the Iraq war and want to discuss their tales of trauma and recovery.

Email your idea to blogs@psychologytoday.com. We ask that you include a brief description of the type of blog you'd write and why you're qualified to write it, as well as five proposed topics. Please choose one or two of the proposed topics and draft a post that would run between 250 and 500 words. Due to the volume of submissions, please allow some time for feedback.

See you next month. And don't hesitate to comment in the box below...I'll be reading, as will many of your peers!

Best,

—Hara