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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.

Do positive psychology interventions—that is, treatment methods or intentional activities aimed at cultivating positive feelings, positive behaviors, or positive cognitions—enhance well-being and ameliorate depressive symptoms? A meta-analysis of 51 such interventions with 4,266 individuals was conducted to address this question and to provide practical guidance to clinicians. The results revealed that positive psychology interventions do indeed significantly enhance well-being (mean r=.29) and decrease depressive symptoms (mean r=.31). In addition, several factors were found to impact the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions, including the depression status, self-selection, and age of participants, as well as the format and duration of the interventions. Accordingly, clinicians should be encouraged to incorporate positive psychology techniques into their clinical work, particularly for treating clients who are depressed, relatively older, or highly motivated to improve. Our findings also suggest that clinicians would do well to deliver positive psychology interventions as individual (versus group) therapy and for relatively longer periods of time. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol: In Session 65: 1–21, 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an ordinal scale developed by the author that has proven useful to assess the expressiveness of both client and psychotherapist. The scale contains seven annotated points with one designated as the least expressive and seven as the most expressive. Behavioral criteria to define scale points were derived from category systems for vocal and lexical expressive styles, while the ordering of points within the scale was done both on the basis of face validity and the empirical findings. Ratings are made from tape recordings of therapy sessions, and both client and therapist responses are rated on the same scale.

The article focuses on the phenomenon of psychotherapy sabotage. Our recent self-disclosure findings have indicated that among clients who were receiving psychotherapy at an interuniversity counseling center there was a tendency to avoid sustained client self-revelation until the final minutes of initial therapy sessions. The therapy upon which this investigation was based was conducted at a large interuniversity college psychological and counseling center that functions as a service, training and research facility. These data revealed that in the middle stages of short-term therapy for a university population clients continue to engage in the highest proportion of self-disclosure during the latter half of the therapy hour.