Daniel J. Siegel

Runs the Mindsight Institute and coined interpersonal neurobiology, which pulls attachment research, neuroscience and mindfulness into one frame.

The Whole-Brain Child, written with Tina Payne Bryson, gives parents twelve strategies with names like name it to tame it, and the hand model of the brain, where the thumb is the amygdala and the fingers the prefrontal cortex flipping up when a child loses control.

Siegel is a clinical psychiatrist trained at UCLA. His neuroscience is simplified for parents and specialists sometimes wince, but the underlying attachment work is solid and the metaphors demonstrably help people at three in the morning.