psychodrama status

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Colleagues, for your information, one of the major textbooks for training psychotherapists and counselors has been Current Psychotherapies, edited by Ray Corsini & Danny Wedding. This series is now preparing its 8th edition. Chapters on psychodrama were first included in the 2nd edition, 1973, by Leon Fine. I wrote chapters for the 4th (1989) and 5th editions (1995), and for the last 7th ed (2005). 

      This series has been taken over by a textbook publisher who reviews the relevance of each approach so that the editors can add new ones that seem to be in fashion, take out ones that are dropping out of favor.

          Here's a report done by their surveyors:



    This was a pre-revision survey that included questions on chapter organization, general issues, ancillaries, and website features.   The survey respondents were drawn from a pool of all those who have been sampled the seventh edition of the book, excluding the authors of this and competing texts.  There were 95 participants, 60% of which were users of the book, while 40% used competing books.  They came from Psychology, Counseling, Nursing, Education, Human Development, and Social Work departments,  and represented 41 states.

 

Results
 

The least-assigned chapter was Chapter 13:  Psychodrama, which was assigned by a little under a quarter of professors.  The online chapter, Asian Psychotherapies, was also rarely assigned, with under 15%.  

 

When asked their reactions to the new chapters, Chapter 13: Psychodrama and Chapter 14: Experiential Psychotherapy, respondents had similar reactions.  For Psychodrama, about half didn't use it, and about a quarter had a positive reaction.  For Experiential, a little under half didn't use it and a little under a quarter had positive reactions.

 

A wide variety of chapters to be added were suggested, many of which could be combined into broader chapters.  The most-named topics were feminist/gender therapy (about 20%), object-relations/self psychology (about 15%), and reality (bring back) (about 15%).  A third said that the new information that should be added is postmodern/ solution-focused/narrative therapies.  About 15% said that more research was needed to back up the theories.  

 

For chapters that should be deleted, Experiential received the most votes with almost a quarter.  Psychodrama received about 20%.  

 

Of those who decided against using the text, about a quarter said it was too advanced or detailed for undergraduate students, and 20% said it needed more current therapies.  

 

When asked what one thing should be changed, about 15% said it needed more examples or more references for where to find more examples.  

 

Nearly everyone (96.5%) would be interested in video vignettes demonstrating theory in action.

 



Chapter 13, Psychodrama, wasn't used by many of the respondents.  That may be due to the fact that it's new, because the positive responses were very enthusiastic.  However, two professors made the suggestion to put this in a chapter that also includes all of the creative therapies, such as art and music therapy, so that may be a way to increase interest.  
 

  a.. A few professors expressed a need for more research or hard evidence to be presented to support and/or dispute each theory.  
   So that's the status of our field in the academic counselor-training fields. Sigh. 





  Adam Blatner, M.D.
(please reply to adam at blatner.com)
website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
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