Psychotherapy & positive psychology: the assessment 'dashboard'
11th March 2011
Last week I wrote on "Psychotherapy & positive psychology: why psychotherapists should pay attention". This week I look at positive psychological assessment. The very widely used DSM system classifies mental disorders on five axes - clinical disorders, personality disorders/retardation, medical conditions, psychosocial/environmental problems, and global functioning. The US DSM and …
ADHD in adults: diagnosing & treating this common problem
9th March 2011
I only recently came across the important article "European consensus statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD: The European Network Adult ADHD" published in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry last autumn. I suspect that most mental health professionals working with adults are poor at recognising and treating Attention …
Behavioural systems (attachment, care giving, exploration, sex & power): hyperactivated, hypoactivated or just about right?
6th March 2011
Overall - along with 50 to 60% of the population - I qualify as "securely attached". I was fortunate in being brought up by loving parents who left me with an internalised "secure attachment script" that runs something like "If I feel a bit insecure or threatened, there will be …
Psychotherapy & positive psychology: why psychotherapists should pay attention
4th March 2011
Early next month I'm scheduled to run a workshop on "Psychotherapy & positive psychology". Most of the participants will be 3rd year counselling psychology students, with a few practising psychotherapists in the mix as well. I haven't run a workshop on this subject before. It's a fascinating area that I …
Recent research: articles from February journals
3rd March 2011
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 15,600 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …
Embodied cognition: what to do
23rd February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!" attrib. Goethe/William Murray "To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing is the …
Embodied cognition: muscle & willpower
22nd February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. Introduction: Lying very comfortably in my warm bed early this morning, I knew I wanted to get up but it was hard to do. I waited a little, then tightened my right hand into a …
Embodied cognition: posture & feelings
21st February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. Sadly (!) more recent research throws doubt on this 'power posture' literature ... see for example Simmons & Simonsohn's paper "Power posing: P-curving the evidence". Intriguingly there is an argument that possible benefits of an …
Mental contrasting: a way to boost our commitment to goals we care about
20th February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. What is ‘mental contrasting'? Mental contrasting (MC) is a way of boosting our energy and commitment for goals that are important to us. It helps us turn our hopes and dreams into realities. Interestingly, and …
Recent research: two studies on relationships, two on body to mind effects, and two on mindfulness
17th February 2011
Here are details of half a dozen recent research papers - two on relationships, two on body to mind effects, and two on mindfulness. Fuller details, links and abstracts of all the studies mentioned are given further down this post. First a couple of relationship studies. Gibb & colleagues reported …