Who could have predicted that a website that restricts posts to 140 characters each would become a top-tier social media property? Twitter’s success has a lot to do with how it shapes our communication styles. Couples seeking to polish their communication skills would do well to examine what makes tweeting so compelling.

There’s no shortage of discourse and debate out there right now, but what happened to keeping it civil? All too often, what passes for debate on politics or the economy or the environment is little more than a steady stream of sensationalistic attacks and unreasoned cajoling.

With the US unemployment rate slowing creeping down from 10%, I’m seeing many clients with unemployment and underemployment on their minds. Worse, conventional techniques for job-hunting seem to be less effective as time wears on. But I’ve found there are new, less-conventional approaches that can help put job-seekers back in the game.

For better or worse — no, actually for better and worse — psychology has developed a huge number of labels for classifying and describing human behavior. It’s up to all of us to make sure these labels are used constructively.

Young children need someone to look at the same things they are looking at to enjoy or understand their own experiences fully. This is a deep need that stays with us for life and perhaps explains something about how therapy works.

Empathy facilitates understanding between counsellors and clients who do not speak the same language. What about online therapy, in which the language is there, without the bodily resonant experience of empathy?

Humankind has come a long way over the eons in terms of how we communicate with one another. But so much of what we say to one another still isn’t captured by the words we speak or the text we type.