Note: I actually had the kidney operation in December 2016 but, when initiatlly writing this blog, the hospital asked me to change the dates so it was less likely that the recipient would be able to identify me 'by mistake'.  Since I and the dear man who received the kidney ... and who is now very well ... have been in fairly regular contact, it's OK to confirm that the actual donation was in December 2016. 

I recently gave a talk entitled "Therapist drift: black heresy or red herring?" where I began by arguing that therapist drift isn't of great importance and rapidly segued into a series of rather more fundamental issues - see the blog posts "Therapist drift: black heresy or red herring - maybe not so important?", "Psychotherapy is helpful but has developed shockingly poorly over the last 30 years" and "Some counsellors & psychotherapists are more effective than others&qu

This is the third in a sequence of blog posts - "Therapist drift: black heresy or red herring - maybe not so important?", "Psychotherapy is helpful but has developed shockingly poorly over the last 30 years" and now this one "Some counsellors & psychotherapists are more effective than others."  As you can see from the slide below, identification and study of highly successful therapists' methods and characteristics is an obvious area to explore much more fully, as it is almost certain to give leads on how we might make general improvements in psychotherapy's helpfulness.

I wrote a blog post recently on "Therapist drift: black heresy or red herring?" where I argued that current research evidence does not suggest that "therapist drift" is of much significance for either increasing or decreasing the effectiveness of psychotherapy.  As you can see from the slide below though, I felt that the whole debate about therapist drift is something of a red herring when one considers the huge challenges faced by psychotherapy as a whole:

                      (this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

I'm scheduled to give a talk at the Psychologists Protection Society AGM entitled "Therapist drift: black heresy or red herring?".  It seems the society has a Continuing Professional Development arm. They invite people to give lectures (there are a couple at this AGM) and then post them onto their Professional Practitioner online resource.  I was approached to talk and given a list of eight potential topics to choose from.

        "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man"  Polonius in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

I have been writing a series of blog posts about character strengths - most recently "Twelve practical suggestions for exploring our character strengths (12): building up specific strengths exercise".  In today's post I give a personal example of using this building exercise with the character strengths of kindness and hope.

More to follow ...

                        (this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

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 just over 24,000 abstracts.  I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant icon at the top of this web page) will keep you up to speed with some of what I'm finding interesting. Additionally you can view this highlighted research by visiting Scoop.it (click on the "it!" icon at the top of the page).  At Scoop.it, I stream publications into five overlapping topic areas: Cognitive & General Psychotherapy, Depression, Compassion & Mindfulness, Healthy Living & Healthy Aging, and Positive Psychology.

In June I went to the biennial European Conference on Positive Psychology running this year in Angers, France.  I've blogged about this meeting - see, for example "European Positive Psychology conference: 1st day - a disappointing start & caution on over-selling mindfulness" and "European Positive Psychology conference: better 2nd day - culture, use of strengths, education & passion". It's been said that if you go to a conference and come away with one good idea and one good contact, then you're doing well.