Call for papers

Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie ZPS
Journal of Psychodrama and Sociometry
Special Issue on Empirical Research and Science II
To Appear in Autumn 2015
Editors: Christian Stadler, Michael Wieser, Kate Kirk, Konrad Schnabel

Following the Special Issue on Psychodrama-Research and Science, which appeared in 2011 and as a book in 2012, we would like to invite you to contribute to a second Special Issue. The planned date for publication is autumn 2015.
Empirical research is key to dealing with questions that are related to scientific approval and acceptance of psychodrama methods. The editors of the Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie (Journal of Psychodrama and Sociometry) have therefore decided to publish an additional issue on this topic. We are looking for authors, who are interested in publishing results of empirical research on Psychodrama, Sociometry, and Role Play methods. The majority of the contributions should be in German, but we would also like to include articles in English.
If you are interested in submitting an article, please send a short abstract (up to one page – 250 – 400 words) by June 1st 2014 to:
Christian Stadler, Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 27, D-85221 Dachau or: praxisstadler@arcor.de
Deadline for article submission is scheduled for September 2014. The length of your article should range between 10 – 14 pages with 2700 signs per page, (approx. 3,500 – 4,500 words)

Best regards
The editors of the Special Issue: Christian Stadler, Michael Wieser, Kate Kirk, & Konrad Schnabel

I’ve responded below to Rebecca’s Q’s.

Are we comparing those treated with psychodrama with those treated with nothing, or with other modalities?

Both can be done.

How will we know that it is the psychodrama opposed to being in group that creates the change?

You won’t for sure (pretty much the main problem in all group research), although if the impact of psychodrama shows consistently, a case can be made for it accounting for a portion of the effective change variance.  Would take collecting more data at more complex levels (and using more advanced statistical procedures).
How valid is self reporting on scales like this considered to be?

Moot point. To answer that question look at the number of on-line research studies that have been propagating (with results being published based on statistical control approaches).  The psychology community certainly doesn’t seem concerned (at least based on their actions rather than their words).

I know we use it for the evaluations that we do at MD Anderson for the communication skill workshops we do using sociodrama…but wouldn’t it be considered more
valid if we also had subjects fill out the evaluation three or six months later?

This “additional study” can be done.  The possibility is built into the informed consents.  However, the self-selection problem (a version of experimental mortality) still must be addressed. The “more valid” aspect can be addressed, as it was in the original Meta-Analysis of therapy study.

While you are making good points (as I imagine all critics will), and certainly those studies can be done (see the informed consents), you are missing my point.  The odds of ever getting most psychodramatists to do true experimental (randomized trials /control group studies, ala the Solomon Four Group Design, gold standard for experimental research) is virtually nil.  As  Marty Selligman showed with the Consumer Reports study, showing effectiveness need not be that “perfect.”  I’m trying to get everyone in the community involved, by asking/demanding very little of them and/or of those receiving services.  You are certainly welcome to discard this idea and/or pursue others.

My aim is to have the community– in the form of ASGPP, the Board of Examiners, and other parallel international entities—band together and get something done.  I don’t care who does it, as long as it gets done.  This “it” is the simplest “it” I can come up with.  Being pretty much retired and getting along OK, I have very little personal investment in such outcomes as publications from  this project.  I feel sad, mostly, that an approach that has so much to offer will likely continue to be a footnote, at best, if that.

http://empower-daphne.psy.unipd.it/userfiles/file/pdf/Daniel%20S_%20-%202006.pdf
This is an article by Sue Daniel regarding some ways of working with young women in individual psychodrama one on one and group and family.
Nice discussion of roles and active listening techniques.

http://empower-daphne.psy.unipd.it/userfiles/file/pdf/Daniel%20S_%20-%202006.pdf

Dear psychodrama researcher and practitioner,
Dear FEPTO colleagues,

In the attachement you will find the report of the FEPTO Research Committee Meeting in Budapest. We could welcome 34 researchers and practitioners from 16 European and Mediterranean countries who were presenting, discussing and developing their research projects and ideas. The current topics of our work are

– Competencies of psychodrama trainers
– Psychodrama with children and adolescents
– Research in psychodrama training
– Supervision in psychodrama training
– Psychodrama effectiveness: HSCED
– Interpretational Phenomenological Analysis IPA
– Morenian identity, theory and methodology
– Developing an international online Journal of Psychodrama

In the report you will find more information about current research in our network group. I hope it is informative to you.

If you are interested in psychodrama research I would like to invite you all to join us next time in

Lublin/ Poland at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
16th-19th of October 2014

I am looking forward to meeting you there.

best regards,

Hannes Krall

Dr. Johannes Krall, ao. Univ.-Prof.
Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB)
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt | Wien | Graz
Universitaetsstr. 65-67
A-9020 Klagenfurt

e-mail: hannes.krall@aau.at
Tel. ++43 463/2700-1244

P.S. If you know people who are interested in psychodrama research please tell them that they can send a mail to me to be on the mailing list to get informations about ongoing activities of the FEPTO Research Committee. Please tell me also if you want your mail address changed or removed from the mailing list.

Take a look at www.narrative4.com on teaching young people to share their stories and take on on a another’s stories. This is very Psychodramatic.

It is interesting to think about what play actually is, and how it might be researched further. Play is of course central to Moreno’s thinking. Here is an article on the theory of play from another important thinker. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1525/aa.1971.73.1.02a00040/asset/aa.1971.73.1.02a00040.pdf?v=1&t=hu2s0pjw&s=4f92198c998d2441a969b33f4d1385333fb719dc

Some of you will recognize this video from Dan Tomasulo’s talk at ASGPP’s annual conference. It suggests that we have a lot to share. Paul Zak on the Future of Storytelling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHeqQAKHh3M

Finding Love Later

My name is Kathy Norgard. I live in a small mountain town in Colorado. After my husband died, I thought it would be my dog and me for the rest of the days. Unexpectedly, I met a man and we are happily coupled. I began to realize that finding love later in life is a relatively new thing that our grandparents and those before them usually did not find or pursue. And, it seems that there are as many ways of having a later relationship as there are couples.

I have a background in psychology, have always been interested in relationships and facilitated marriage counseling for many years. I developed an open-ended questionnaire that I like to give in person (or over the phone) preferably with both members of the couple to find out more about how people are putting together later relationships. It seems that there is a new culture evolving on the American scene and older couples are creating it.

I have interviewed some couples already and am looking for more. If you, or maybe someone you know, would be interested in finding out more about this project, please contact me. I am hoping to write an article and perhaps a book about the topic. Of course, people will remain anonymous.

Kathy Norgard, Ph.D. 970-349-6223
/email: knorgard@gmail.com

Dan Tomasulo proposes positive stories as therapeutic interventions and his article is available online at http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/50533/psych2012123116562691-29.pdf

During the recent ASGPP conference a question struck me.  The psychodrama community likes to come together to enact what is up for us.  That is different from what goes on at many other professional conferences I have attended such as the American Bar Assoc. or American Trial Lawyers or Research Society on Alcoholism or College on Problems of Drug Dependence.  Why, I wonder, is that?  Is “act hunger” a measurable phenomenon?  If so, how would we know it and show it?    If you have ideas on this topic, please send them to me at ericahollander@comcast.net and I will insert them here.