Keynote | Plenary Session | Panel Discussions | Papers | Workshops | Posters

PANEL DISCUSSION 1

Sadie Ashraf, Ronika Prakash, Juliana Scalise, Lara Honos-Webb, Anju Aliyar, Karen Karas-Lekashman, and Prajakta Godbole, Santa Clara University
Constructing Terror: Exploring Interactions of Spirituality, Personality Traits, and Bereavement with Trauma Symptoms

Presenters will report on a series of related studies involving secondary analyses of a project that examined the psychological effects of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The first presentation will explore the role of rational vs. experiential personality traits on coping strategies by conducting qualitative analyses on journal writings. The second paper will explore bereavement as a moderator of the impact of story-listening as a treatment for trauma symptoms.

Chair and Discussant: Larry Leitner, Miami University

Paper 1:
Ronika Prakash, Sadie Ashraf, Lara Honos-Webb, Anju Aliyar, Karen Karas-Lekashman, and Prajakta Godbole, Santa Clara University
The Impact of a Rational vs. Experiential Personality Traits on Constructions of Terrorist Attacks

The purpose of the study was to explore the impact of Rational Personality Traits (RPT) and Experiential Personality Traits (EPT) on participants' constructions of terrorist attacks by conducting qualitative analyses of journal writings. The researchers' expectations were that thematic analyses would reveal different coping strategies such that participants with EPT sought emotional soothing coping strategies whereas participants with RPT sought strategies to increase their sense of control over traumatic events. We also predicted that participants with the ability to integrate both RPT and EPT would have fewer reported trauma symptoms versus participants who applied processes of only one personality trait.

Paper 2:
Juliana Scalise and Lara Honos-Webb, Santa Clara University
Exploring Customized Trauma Interventions: Story-Listening for the Bereaved

This study proposes that accommodation-based trauma reduction interventions, that entail expanding the self, are more effective for particular conditions of bereavement, than assimilation-based interventions, which entail integration of trauma into the existing self. This study examines trauma symptoms related to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Representing an assimilation-based treatment, half the participants of this study completed journal writing. Representing accommodation-based treatment, half the subjects listened to professionally told folk stories. We predicted that for those subjects who were bereaved prior to the secondary trauma of 9/11, story-listening would be the most effective intervention. Having already confronted the pain of a recent loss, we expected bereaved subjects to have less need for direct exploration of the new trauma and greater need for the support and meaning reconstruction opportunities afforded in the accommodation-focused intervention of story-listening.

PANEL DISCUSSION 2

Amberly Panepinto, Valerie Loeffler, Carol Humphreys, and Larry Leitner, Miami University
The Three Faces of Experiential Personal Construct Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice

Experiential Personal Construct Psychology (EPCP) is an elaboration of Kelly's theory with an emphasis on the sociality corollary. This symposium will expand upon important components of EPCP in three crucial areas--theory, research, and practice. The first paper will theoretically address an understanding of the construction processes of clients with severe disturbances. The second will focus on the research of therapist-client similarity and the implications for EPCP. Finally, a detailed case study will elaborate on the concepts of transference and countertransference in practice within an EPCP framework.

Chair and Moderator: Larry Leitner, Miami University

Paper 1:
Valerie Loeffler and Larry Leitner, Miami University
Sociality and Elaborative Choice: Implications for Conceptualization of Severe Disturbances

Paper 2:
Amberly Panepinto and Larry Leitner, Miami University
Therapist-Client Similarity: Implications for Experiential Personal Construct Psychotherapy

Paper 3:
Carol Humphreys and Larry Leitner, Miami University
The Assumption of Presence: Transference and Countertransference--A Case Study

PANEL DISCUSSION 3

Lynn Fels, Monique Giard, Marcia Braundy, and Kadi Purri, University of British Columbia
Conversations about Performative Inquiry

Paper 1:
Lynn Fels, University of British Columbia
Introduction to Performative Inquiry As Method: Potentials for Counselling Psychology

Paper 2:
Monique Giard, University of British Columbia
Writing and Performing Masquerade: Healing Through Performative Inquiry

Paper 3:
Marcia Braundy, University of British Columbia
Performative Inquiry As Pro-Active Response to Trauma and Intervention for Change

Paper 4:
Kadi Purri, University of British Columbia
Performative Inquiry and September 11th: Dealing With Communal Trauma

PANEL DISCUSSION 4

Cellie Gardner, Private Practice; Lara Honos-Webb, Jerrold Shapiro, and Sunwolf, Santa Clara University; and April Faidley, Flagstone Psychology
Inventing, Evolving, and Elaborating Constructivist Practice

Three clinical psychologists present views of constructivist practice from their own perspectives. These presentations build upon one another, illustrating growing edge issues and set the stage for lively discussion. Each paper involves the interaction of constructivist theory with other theoretical orientations and disciplines.

Paper 1:
Chellie Gardner, Private Practice

From Cognitive-Behavioral Training to Constructivist Practice
This paper explores the transition from training to practice in the context of dissimilar theoretical assumptions. It includes a discussion of the experience of learning a "favored" approach while seeking and longing for greater meaning, as well as a description of various attempts at finding and creating meaning. This background will then provide a context for the adventure of achieving freedom to practice as one believes, deciding exactly what that is, and working with clients through the process. The implications and potential future directions conclude the exploration.

Paper 2:
Lara Honos-Webb, Jerrold Shapiro, and Sunwolf, Santa Clara University
The Healing Power of Telling Stories in Psychotherapy

Storytelling by a therapist to clients may serve to increase clients' ability to bear pain, to increase self-complexity, and expand clients' senses of the allowable. A model delineating the therapeutic impact of therapist storytelling in psychotherapy is proposed. Stories may change clients' selves so that they may accommodate traumatic experiences and internal complexity. Stories serve as a container of tragic life experiences. The artistry of therapeutic story selection is defined as choosing stories consonant with clients' strengths. The power of story-listening to alter consciousness in pleasant ways (storystoned) increases its usefulness as an intervention that is neither anxiety provoking nor re-traumatizing.

Paper 3:
April Faidley, Flagstone Psychology
The Nonverbal Known in Therapy

By viewing nonverbal constructs as presentationally symbolized experience, therapists have a fresh approach to the nonverbal. Through examining the nature of presentational symbolism, hypotheses in regard to when nonverbal construing is probably "in play" for clients are suggested. A discussion of treatment implications focuses on encouraging and validating expressions of presentationally symbolized experience, intuiting through the relationship, and giving a voice to the nonverbal. The therapist's humility plays an essential role throughout this process.

PANEL DISCUSSION 5

Robert Neimeyer, Laura Ray, Janet Krantz, Karina Koerner, Heather Hardison, Brandon Thornburg, and Rebecca Kelly, University of Memphis
Fixed Role in a Fish Bowl: Consultation-Based Fixed Role Therapy as a Pedagogical Technique

Since Kelly's pioneering work on Fixed Role Therapy (FRT) in the late 1930's, this novel method for fostering experimentation with and performance of alternative identities has been adapted for use in a number of clinical contexts (e.g., individual, couples, and group therapy) as well as some pedagogical applications (e.g., the construction of "standardized patients" in medical education). Our intent was to blend these contexts by developing a fixed role enactment as a collective class exercise in a graduate seminar on Personal Construct Psychology. Beginning with the self-characterization of a class volunteer, the class of 12 students formed three "consultation teams" to analyze the protocol and draft an alternative role for the volunteer to enact, while the volunteer herself and the course instructor circulated through the subgroups "consulting with the consultants." In subsequent stages groups then melded their provisional sketches into a single, coherent identity through joint negotiation, in which the interests, preferences, and suggested revisions of the sketch by the volunteer were given priority. Daily enactment of the role led to several insights on the part of the volunteer, which were reported to and discussed weekly with her consultants in the classroom setting. The result was a moving, innovative, respectful, and often surprising process of experiential learning for the entire class, bringing to life many of the principles that animate constructivist therapy. This presentation specifies the procedures that evolved over the course of the project, and includes the reflexive commentary of several participants (volunteer, consultants, and instructor) as a way of sharing the technique with others who might like to apply it in their own pedagogical (or clinical) settings.

Keynote | Plenary Session | Panel Discussions | Papers | Workshops | Posters