Resources

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This area is designed to compliment our psychodrama training programs as well as hold articles that are stimulating and challenging.

The Therapy wars -

Therapy wars: the revenge of Freud

Cheap and effective, CBT became the dominant form of therapy, consigning Freud to psychology’s dingy basement. But new studies have cast doubt on its supremacy – and shown dramatic results for psychoanalysis. Is it time to get back on the couch? Maybe not but it is interesting to see how the argument goes.

 

Moreno in the kingdom of the children

The story of Moreno creating plays with children in the garden's of Vienna is slightly apocryphal so it was with delight I found this article from the Group Psychotherapy Psychodrama and Sociometry journal from 1979. You can read it online or download and read at your leisure.

As a very young man Moreno's. play with children in the gardens of Vienna proved to be a seedbed from which his therapeutic methods developed. He wrote about these story games in Das Koenigreich der Kinder (The Kingdom of the Children) in 1908. It was not without pride that he described how, given the opportunities he provided, one child after another revealed true dramatic talent. Some went on in later life to distinguished careers in the theater.
Of these, perhaps the most talented and most widely acclaimed was the actress Elisabeth Bergner. An ornament to the stage in Max Reinhardt"s theater in Berlin, in London with Charles Cochran, in films with Alexander Korda and her husband Paul Czinner, and on tours around the world, the films she made are considered cinema classics. Among her films was her greatest success, Escape Me Never. Its title could serve to describe her feelings toward Moreno.
Now Elisabeth Bergner has written her autobiography, Bewundert Viel und Viel Gescholten (Much Admired and Much Chided). With grace and felicity she discharges her debt to Moreno. By permission of her publishers-C. Bertelsmann Verlag of Munich-I have translated the following excerpts:

A video presentation of Bob Siroka and psychodrama

This film was made in 1985, exactly forty years ago, and eleven years after the passing of J. L. Moreno.

It is a 30-minute edited version of a full day workshop.  Bob skillfully directs the session and he offers very clear instructions and insights infused with his distinctive sense of humor. Some of us may identify colleagues as younger participants, before they emerged into leadership positions in the psychodrama world. One of them (hint: initials R. M.) is mah-ve-lous in her Brooklyn accent. That, of course, occurred before she relocated to a southern state and then found her way up north in her journey. I'm sure you will enjoy this bit of nostalgia. Jacob Gershoni

Another neat Dan Gilbert talk - the psychology of your future self.

"Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished." Dan Gilbert shares recent research on a phenomenon he calls the "end of history illusion," where we somehow imagine that the person we are right now is the person we'll be for the rest of time. Hint: that's not the case.

Empathic Writing by Dr Bob Dick

It has been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It might also be argued that meaning is in the mind of the reader. For someone writing a university assignment or thesis this is an important truth. Markers and examiners can’t directly assess how much understanding you have. They assess how much understanding you convey.

Empathic writing — writing with the reader in mind — has advantages for writer as well as for reader.

Translated Articles - to be added to and to be redrafted if you have the time

This is a area of putting in translated articles - they are acknowledged as not brilliantly translated but as done with help from Google.

Ridiculous and amazingly truthful organisation videos

These are seriously stupid videos that, unfortunately, some of us are completely able to relate to. They are here for enjoyment and remind us that what may make sense to one may be total nonsense to others.

Invoking the self

Three randomized experiments found that subtle linguistic cues have the power to increase voting and related behavior. The phrasing of survey items was varied to frame voting either as the enactment of a personal identity (e.g., “being a voter”) or as simply a behavior (e.g., “voting”). As predicted, the personal-identity phrasing significantly increased interest in registering to vote (experiment 1) and, in two statewide elections in the United States,
voter turnout as assessed by official state records (experiments 2 and 3). These results provide evidence that people are continually managing their self-concepts, seeking to assume or affirm valued personal identities. The results further demonstrate how this process can be channeled to motivate important socially relevant behavior.

A series of research articles from 2015 - for interest or fun.

This is a series of journal articles that I found listed on Google Scholar for 2015. They are of interest because they are not generally available and are in interesting journals from around the world: some are psychodrama journals but most are not. They are here for enjoyment, perusal, and reading, if you see the need. I have included the titles in the files names so you may get a flavour of each one - and a could of extra words if more are needed.

Ontology, worldviews, and all that!

Where do we come from? Are we merely a cluster of elementary particles in a gigantic world receptacle? And what does it all mean?

In this highly original new book, the philosopher Markus Gabriel challenges our notion of what exists and what it means to exist. He questions the idea that there is a world that encompasses everything like a container life, the universe, and everything else. This all-inclusive being does not exist and cannot exist. For the world itself is not found in the world. And even when we think about the world, the world about which we think is obviously not identical with the world in which we think. For, as we are thinking about the world, this is only a very small event in the world. Besides this, there are still innumerable other objects and events: rain showers, toothaches and the World Cup. Drawing on the recent history of philosophy, Gabriel asserts that the world cannot exist at all, because it is not found in the world. Yet with the exception of the world, everything else exists; even unicorns on the far side of the moon wearing police uniforms.

Revelling in witty thought experiments, word play, and the courage of provocation, Markus Gabriel demonstrates the necessity of a questioning mind and the role that humour can play in coming to terms with the abyss of human existence.