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Abstract: This paper addresses how musical metaphors can be useful in understanding the substructure of psychotherapy by considering how our patients resonate inside us, what that resonance does to and for us, and how these acoustic properties seem to be foundational in the construction of the therapist as an instrument of healing. From this perspective, psychotherapy involves “living music” with another person, as the process of psychotherapy always involves the passing of sound back and forth across an interpersonal divide. This requires both psychotherapist and patient to step into the roles of performer and audience member. Additionally, psychotherapists can be meaningfully thought of not only as an “instrument” of healing, but also an “instrumentalist” who produces unique “therapeutic music.” Moreover, the patient and therapist cocreate the concert space in which treatment is performed. This concert space has unique “architectural,” and thus acoustic, properties within which we hear and remember one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The physical spaces in which we conduct psychotherapy are an important yet underacknowledged aspect of psychotherapeutic work. Although a few contemporary publications have provided suggestions for the creation of welcoming, comfortable, and efficient practice spaces, considerations of what it means to transform a room into a therapeutic space have remained largely absent from recent literature. This paper reviews the existing literature on this subject and describes the ways in which the therapist's office is intimately tied to several processes of the therapy itself, by way of creating an adaptive environment that is able to meet the needs of both therapist and client over the course of their work together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the development and validation of an automated referral system. While a complete answer to the question posed earlier requires a demonstration that treatment gains are maximized, the current study only considers the efficacy of an automated procedure relative to clinical staff assignment. In short, the hypothesis examined is that treatment assignment of inpatient alcoholics can be accomplished via automation without a loss of effectiveness and with greater efficiency, when compared to assignment by a clinical treatment team. Establishing the efficacy of an automated referral system is an initial step toward the maximization of treatment benefits and, consequently, is the focus of the discussion.

This article presents information on the application of role playing, as a research technique, in a test of Sarbin's self role congruency theory. The present study attempts to provide further confirmation of Sarbin's congruency theory, in this case within a setting analogous to psychotherapy. It was believed that by using Ss who were playing the roles of therapist and clients it would be possible to obtain information relevant to the effects of self-role congruency and incongruency in the psychotherapeutic interaction. A secondary purpose of the study was to provide data on the validity of pencil and paper tests that purport to measure role-playing aptitude. Forty nine male Ss from various undergraduate classes volunteered to role play either a therapist or a client in a half-hour role-playing session designed to simulate psychotherapy.