http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_beware_conflicts_of_interest.html

For those of you who have not yet   looked at the Scott Miller and Barry Duncan group’s website, you may want to do so.  They discuss evidence based practice as well as many topics of concern to therapists.  You will find a number of articles  of interest.  There are a couple of quick measures –one on outcomes, and one about the relationship of client and therapist–that they offer to individual therapists that are really simple and straightforward.  Even if you don’t want to use their measures for reasons of cost or for some other reason, they may give you some ideas about designing differing approaches of your own.

I can enthusiastically recommend The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do and how to change by Charles Duhigg.   Duhigg is an investigative reporter for the NY Times who writes a lively book about the neurology of habits, companies that change successfully and societies that change for the better.

There is a small fund available to help support research in Psychodrama, Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy and related fields.  A copy of the application to fill out if you are applying for such support is on the blog.  If you want to submit, print the application and fill it out and send to ASGPP by snail mail please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n4qSt1GPFI  is the video of Australian veterans working with PTSD psychodramatically if you have not seen it.

In an article in the journal  Emotion, DeSteno and Valdesolo show that very simple common experience–synchronized movement– increases compassion.  Their research methods are briefly described in an article in the  NY Times Sunday, July 7, 2013 and should be of great interest to psychodramatists.  Synchronous motion is involved in doubling.  Here is the citation for the article:

Synchrony and the social tuning of compassion. Valdesolo, Piercarlo DeSteno, David ; Emotion, Vol 11(2), Apr, 2011. pp. 262-266. [Journal Article]

Although evidence has suggested that synchronized movement can foster cooperation, the ability of synchrony to increase costly altruism and to operate as a function of emotional mechanisms remain…

Subjects: 

Altruism; Cooperation; Motor Coordination; Motor Processes; Sympathy

If simple shared experience increases observable compassionate behavior, think what doubling and/or role reversal might do!   And would that not be an interesting hypothesis to test?

Some time back Ann Hale mentioned an old article by Tom Schramski offering a systematic psychodrama model.  I tracked it down and posted it so you can read it for yourselves.   Download